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Bijlage 6 .
Bijlage verklaring van Standard & Poors bij handhaving Creditrating BBB- voor Roemeens staatsrisico van april 2015
BUCHAREST (Romania), April 10 (SeeNews) - Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services on Friday affirmed its ‘BBB-/A-3’ long- and short-
term foreign and local currency sovereign credit ratings on Romania, with a stable outlook.
“The ratings are supported by Romania’s moderate external and fiscal indebtedness amid relatively firm growth prospects,”
S&P said in a statement.
The rating agengy also said in the statement:
“The ratings are constrained by the poor governance framework despite recent efforts to reduce corruption, low GDP per
capita of $8,600 relative to peers’, and still-high--though declining--private-sector debt denominated in foreign currency, which
can restrict monetary policy.
The Romanian economy grew by nearly 3% in 2014, supported by private consumption growth. Households benefited from
lower inflation, in particular from falling oil prices, as well as rising incomes and employment. We expect these effects will
carry into 2015. Moreover, we expect domestic demand will further strengthen over the next four years as the resolution of
nonperforming loans (NPLs; loans past 90 days due) in the banking sector continues, thereby allowing for a recovery of lending
to the private sector. Efforts to write-off and restructure the stock of past-due loans led to an eight percentage-point decline
in the ratio of NPLs to total loans to 13.9% in December 2014 from 21.9% in December 2013. We therefore think the Romanian
economy will grow on average by 3% between 2015 and 2018.
Risks to our growth forecast include a continued low rate of absorption of EU funds, an uncertain external environment amplified
by geopolitical risks, or lower-than-anticipated inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI). A weaker-than-projected recovery
of credit growth to the private sector by Romania’s predominantly foreign-owned banks could constitute an additional risk.
Since 2009, Romanian policymakers have consolidated government finances, cutting the fiscal deficit to an estimated 1.9% of
GDP in 2014 from 9.0% in 2009. Although the government imposed tough pro-cyclical expenditure constraints during that period,
much of the improvement in headline fiscal numbers since then has benefitted from average nominal GDP growth of 4.2% over
2009-2014 (and 5.5% over 2010-2014), versus the EU-28 average of 0.8%.
Although Romania outperformed its 2014 fiscal target, the outlook for fiscal performance from this year onward is less certain,
in our view, especially in light of the charged political environment following Prime Minister Ponta’s defeat in the November
presidential elections and the electoral calendar ahead. Both events bear potential fiscal consequences, in our opinion. In 2015,
the effect of the 5% cut in social security contributions--in place since October 2014--will be felt for the full year, as will the
cut in the duty on special constructions, which was reduced to 1% from 1.5% in early 2015. At the same time, we understand the
minimum wage will be increased again. We expect a continued recovery in domestic demand to aid revenue intake, partially
offsetting the impact of some of these measures. However, in the absence of any clearly defined means to absorb these
revenue losses and taking into account further loosening of the fiscal stance ahead of the 2016 parliamentary elections, we
anticipate that the general government deficit will widen slightly to 2% of GDP in 2015.
The government proposes to change the fiscal code starting in 2016. The most prominent of these measures are the cuts in
the value-added tax (VAT) to 20% from 24% in 2016 and again to 18% in 2018. Other changes envisaged include an elimination
of the tax on dividends, lower excise duties, and lower social contributions. In fact, some of these cuts have already been
brought forward to 2015; for instance, the VAT rate on all food products and non-alcoholic beverages will be cut to 9% from
24% with effect from June 2015. We understand that Romania’s Fiscal Council estimates that if all of the proposed changes
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