The leu has weakened almost 15 percent against the euro in the past year, making imports of capital goods and raw materials more expensive. Higher global energy prices also increased costs for producers. Producer-price growth is an early indicator of inflation, which in May was 8.5 percent, more than twice the pace of the euro region.
Prices of manufactured goods rose an annual 19.6 percent in May, compared with 17.7 percent in April, while price growth in the mining and drilling industries slowed to 11 percent from 13.2 percent. The costs of electricity, natural gas and water rose an average of 3 percent, compared with 2.9 percent in April, the statistics institute said.
In another indication of the growing stresses and strains which are now accumulating in the Romanian economy, we learnt today that overdue private debt almost doubled in April from a year earlier as the local currency weakened, making loans in euros more expensive to repay. Loan payments that are more than 30 days overdue rose to 691 million lei ($300 million) in April from 380 million lei a year earlier, according to the Banca Nationala a Romaniei.
Private debt in Romania rose an annual 61.3 percent in May from a year earlier in a lending boom spurred by rising wages and competition among banks, the central bank said on June 24. Borrowing in euros accounted for most of the lending.
In May 2008, non-government credit grew 1.8 percent, or 1.3 percent in real terms, versus April 2008 to RON 171,834.3 million. RON-denominated loans went up 2.4 percent (1.9 percent in real terms) and foreign currency-denominated loans rose by 1.4 percent when expressed in RON and by 2.9 percent when expressed in EUR. At end-May 2008, non-government credit climbed year on year by 61.3 percent, or 48.8 percent in real terms, on the back of the 41.7 percent increase in RON-denominated loans (30.6 percent in real terms) and the 82.6 percent advance in foreign currency-denominated loans expressed in RON (when expressed in EUR, forex loans expanded by 65.0 percent).
If we look at the annual rates of increase in loans and forex loans (see chart below) we can see that the rate of increase in RON denominated household has been falling slowly now for some time, but that the rate of increase in Total Forex loans and Household Forex was very very fast, but peaked in January, and is now declining. This could mean that the lending boom has now past its peak, and that we are into the downside, if so we should start to see some reflection of this in real economy data in the not too distant future.
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