Romania’s GDP (gross domestic product) increased by 3.7% in 2015, reaching RON 710 billion (EUR 160 billion).

All economic sectors contributed to the economic growth, except for agriculture, which had a negative impact of 0.5 percentage points, according to official data released by the National Statistics Insitute (INS) on Tuesday, March 8.

Commerce, which is the second biggest sector in terms of its share in the GDP (15.8%) contributed 1 percentage point (pp) to the GDP growth. The IT sector, which stands for only 5.7% of the GDP, added 0.6 pp to the economic increase. The construction sector, which represents 7.4% of the local GDP, had a similar contribution (0.6 pp).

The biggest sector in the local economy, industry, which has a 23.2% share in the total GDP, also generated 0.5 pp of the economic growth.

Professional, scientific and technical activities, administrative and support services, brought 0.3 pp of the GDP growth. The real estate sector and public administration contributed 0.2 pp each, and entertainment and cultural activities added another 0.1 pp. The financial sector had a neutral contribution to the GDP growth.

Net product taxes generated 0.7 pp of the economic increase.

On the expense side, the domestic consumption had an overall contribution of 4 percentage points to the GDP growth while the net exports had a 1.6 pp negative impact, as the imports grew faster than the exports.

Andrei Chirileasa, andrei@romania-insider.com