September 19 (SeeNews) - Romanian finance ministry analysts on Monday increased their forecast for the country's 2016 economic growth to 4.8% from a previous 4.2% based on expectations of a more robust performance across sectors than originally projected.
The National Prognosis Commission (CNP), an analyst unit within the finance ministry, said in a statement that Romania's Gross Domestic Product would total 758.5 billion lei ($191 billion/170 billion euro) in 2016. This compares with a 3.8% growth to 712.8 billion lei in 2015.
Economic growth in 2016 will be backed by a more rapid increase in final household consumption, by 7.7%, CNP said, revising its previous forecast of a 6% rise made in April.
Final household consumption rose 9.6% on the year and by 3% on the quarter during the second quarter of 2016, according to the latest data available from the country's statistics office, INS.
The CNP also expects agriculture to grow by 9.4%, services by 5.8%, construction by 5.7% and industry by 2.4% in 2016. This compared with April forecasts of 9.4% drop in agriculture output, a 4.7% rise in services, an 8.8% growth in construction and a 2% growth in industry.
Exports of goods and services are expected to grow by 4.5% in 2016, while imports are seen increasing by 9.3% in 2016, according to the latest CNP projections.
Trade balance for 2016 is expected to show a deficit of 10.25 billion euro ($11.5 billion), the CNP said.
Romania's trade gap widened to 5.11 billion euro for the first seven months of 2016, from 3.94 billion euro in the same period last year, INS said earlier. Exports rose by 2.9% on the year to 32.9 billion euro, while imports increased 5.8% to 38.1 billion euro in the seven months through July 2016.
Regarding unemployment rate, CNP expects that it will edge down to 6.5% in 2016 from 6.8% in 2015.
Romania's unemployment rate rose to 6.1% in July from 6.0% in June, INS data showed.
CNP said in the statement it kept unchanged its economic growth forecasts for the next three years compared to its April projection: 4.3% for 2017, 4.5% for 2018 and 4.7% for 2019.
(1 euro = 4.4519 Romanian lei)