Annals of the University of Oradea: Economic Science (Jul 2016)
SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF ROMANIA’S EXTERNAL TRADE IN THE PERIOD 1990-2014
Abstract
This paper investigate the evolution of the Romania’s exports and imports in the period 1990-2014, having in mind the relationship between external trade and sustainability of the national economy. The issue of the economic growth is addressed, considering different steps taken by Romania since the year 1990, corroborated with those of the global financial crisis which broke out in 2008. The global financial crisis, which started at the end of the year 2008, had a negative impact on exports and imports of Romania. One of the reason of this negative impact is related to the fact that Romania's economy is heavily dependent on the other EU Member States economic evolution, which is vulnerability. This strong dependence is illustrated by the high scale of the crisis impact on Romania’s GDP and on the external trade flows. The relationship between these macro-indicators is very important and it is dependent on the export resilience to the external shocks. Exports and imports increased over the whole period analyzed, so that today we can say that openness of Romanian economy is relatively high, which implies not only opportunities for external trade, but also concerns for increasing resilience of the national economy to the possible external shocks and vulnerabilities. Export resilience of Romania as well as of its county’s was analysed in this study. The main conclusion of the paper reveals that the evolution of external trade at global level failed to counteract the negative effects of the economic crisis in Romania and did not contribute to its sustainability and convergence. The GDP decline in 2009 and 2010 has been recovered only partially by 2014 even if exports and imports exceeded the maximum level before the crisis. As regard the territorial level, the export resilience is not favourable for those counties who focused theirs exports on primary products, products based on natural resources and low-technology products. This kind of exports lead to the decrease of the gains from external exchange and implicitly to a low potential of endogenous growth at the county level, mainly due to deteriorating terms of trade.
