Romania: Trade balance improving in April

Exports continued to accelerate in April, reaching 9.7% growth YoY. The auto sector remains the main driver, accelerating to 11.3% YoY and thus contributing 5.4ppt to total export growth. Acceleration is visible also in food items and other manufactured products.

Imports accelerated as well, to 7.3% YoY from 5.8% in Mar-18 and driven by the dynamic auto sector (+8.1% YoY) and other manufactured products (+8.3% YoY). Food items saw their fourth consecutive month of deceleration but still posted 4.9% YoY growth.

As mentioned in our previous note, we expect rebalancing to continue. Nevertheless, with the notable exception of the auto sector, the underlying reasons are more to do with the economy slowing and less with structural improvement and/or competitive gains.