Romania: Sharp decline in investment in 2010

In the past year, investment in the Romanian economy decreased by 13.5% to 55.69 billion lei (approximately 12.4 billion euros) in comparison with 2009. Investment had already fallen by almost a third in 2009 as a consequence of the economic crisis. In the final quarter of 2010, investment was only around 5.3% lower than during the same period in 2009. Romania has been in recession since autumn 2008. Since summer 2010, tough austerity measures have been introduced by the government to scale down the enormously high level of budget expenditure. These include swingeing cuts in wages and pensions as well as in public investment. As a result of this programme, the 2010 budget deficit was reduced from 7.4% (2009) to 6.5%