Bucharest, October 10, 2024 – RBJ – Today, National Statistics has placed in the public space another piece of information that shows the disaster what has been established in our foreign trade. We sell less and less and import more and more.
Romanian exports were concentrated in the European Union area. About 75 percent of the goods sold in Romania are destined for EU member states. This is also because a good part of the Romanian industrial structure is dependent on the more developed economies in the community area. Moreover, some industrial sectors in Romania, such as the automotive industry, energy industry, metallurgy have turned into a workshop of the big ones from Germany, France, Holland or the US. If the parent companies in the West are in trouble, the workshops in Romania are becoming very sick.
On the other hand, in the last decades, Romania refused to revitalize economic relations with countries in Africa, Latin America or Asia. No governmental or private initiative has crossed EU borders. We forgot about powerful, dynamic markets, such as Algeria, Morocco, Brazil, Chile, China, Vietnam, and others.
We cannot fail to state in these lines that the governmental structure in the field of exports is downright a broken engine, a vehicle that consumes a lot and produces nothing.
The fabric of economic offices next to our embassies abroad does not produce anything. We have filled the world with all kinds of people paid with colossal sums who have no responsibility in promoting the Romanian offer. Moreover, many of these people are more concerned with increasing imports from the countries where they reside.
Therefore, the figures below cannot be surprising.
The trade balance deficit (FOB/CIF) recorded by Romania in the first eight months of the current year increased by 14.6%, compared to the same period in 2023, up to the value of 20.919 billion euros, according to the data published on Thursday by National Institute of Statistics (INS).
According to the quoted source, only at the level of August 2024, FOB exports amounted to 6.549 billion euros, and CIF imports reached 9.429 billion euros, which led to a deficit of 2.880 billion euros. Thus, compared to August of the previous year, exports decreased by 7.5%, while imports decreased by 3%.
At the same time, between January 1 and August 31, 2024, FOB exports totaled 61.139 billion euros (-1.6% compared to the first eight months of 2023), and CIF imports were 82.059 billion euros (+2%).
INS data reveal that, at the end of August this year, important shares in the structure of exports and imports are held by the product groups: machines and transport equipment (46.8% for export and 36.3% for import) and other manufactured products (28.9% for export and 28.6% for import).
The value of intra-EU27 exchanges of goods amounted to 44.099 million euros, in the analyzed period, for shipments, respectively to 59.360 billion euros for introductions, which represented 72.1% of total exports and 72.3% of total imports .
Also, the value of extra-EU27 exchanges of goods reached 17.040 billion euros, in the case of exports, and 22.699 billion euros in imports, i.e. 27.9% of total exports and 27.7% of total imports.
