Romania: Industrial output falls at sharpest rate since April in December
Industrial output plunged 6.3% year-on-year in December (November: -3.6% yoy). This marked the worst reading since April, reflecting a broad-based downturn across the major sectors, with manufacturing, mining and quarrying and energy output all contracting in December.
On a seasonally adjusted monthly basis, industrial production fell at a sharper rate of 1.6% in December (November: -1.3% month on month), the worst reading since June. Meanwhile, the trend pointed downwards, with the annual average variation in industrial production coming in at minus 2.0%, compared with a reading of minus 1.5% in November.
With regard to the outlook for this year, Eugen Sinca from Erste Group commented:
“We expect this year’s industrial production growth [to be] close to zero. [The] real effective exchange rate shows a loss of price competitiveness for local manufacturing in 2022. This came on top of bottlenecks related to physical infrastructure, education and [the] labor market, explaining part of the divergence between the recent improvement in external confidence indicators and the weakness in domestic manufacturing in terms of both soft and hard data.”