Romania Feed

Car sales on the Romanian market dropped 32.3% on the year in the fist nine months of 2020, under the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, data from the Automotive Manufacturers and Importers Association (APIA) showed Tuesday.

The International Monetary Fund estimates Romania's economy will contract by 4.8% this year, a slightly milder contraction compared with the 5% estimated in April, according to the latest World Economic Outlook released Tuesday.

Impact Developer & Contractor (IMP.RO), a real estate developer held by businessman Gheorghe Iaciu, concluded a contract of EUR9.5 million with construction firm Premium Invest Concept for the construction and delivery of a “turnkey” apartment complex in Constanta (south-eastern Romania).

Groupe Renault has decided that third generation Dacia Sandero will be produced exclusively in Morocco, while the Dacia plant in Mioveni will be producing models with higher added value and Dacia Logan, which is the best selling car in Romania.

Romania’s office space market, affected by the COVID-19 restrictions, was revived in the third quarter of 2020 by contract renegotiations and extensions, with the total volume of transactions amounting to 56,730 square meters leased, down 12% from the same period in 2019, per an analysis by ESOP Consulting.

Romanian regional investment fund SIF Transilvania (SIF3.RO) has contracted a loan of RON40 million from lender Banca Transilvania, which will be used exclusively for the payment of dividends to shareholders.

Casa Rusu, one of the largest furniture manufacturers and retailers in Romania, has relocated its headquarters in Timisoara (western Romania) after leasing 500 square meters within the Vox Technology Park office building.

Sales of fast-moving consumer goods varied a lot from week to week in Romania in the first nine months of the year, depending on the latest developments on the market, the steps taken by the government and the number of Covid-19 cases. Most weeks, however, recorded growth of at least 8%, a Retail Zoom survey shows.

The top 20 hotel companies by revenue, which are based in Bucharest, posted 1.1 billion lei revenue in 2019, Trade Register Office data show.

Iasi-based Electra group, which makes video and audio door intercoms, bets on export and diversification of the product portfolio to keep the business growing.

Bonds issued by real estate leasing and sub-lease company Ready Office Rent (ROR22) will start trading on the market segment dedicated to bonds of the Bucharest stock market's Multilateral Trading System (SMT) Tuesday, Oct 13.

Regional investment fund SIF Moldova (SIF2.RO) has initiated the first stage of a buy-back program in which it seeks to buy maximum 2 million of its own shares in the period October 12-December 31.

Romania's finance ministry on Monday raised 324.7 million lei (EUR66.6 million), versus a RON300 million target, selling bonds maturing in October 2034 at an average yield of 3.93%, central bank data showed.

Romania's finance ministry on Monday raised 675 million lei (EUR138.55 million) selling government bonds maturing in March 2022 at an average yield of 2.9% a year, central bank data showed.

The United States Department of Commerce has determined an anti-dumping tariff of 83.94% on aluminium sheets made by Romania's Alro SA (ALR.RO) applicable immediately, the company said in a statement Monday.

The supervisory board of Romanian state-owned power grid operator Transelectrica (TEL.RO) has extended the mandates of current provisional Directorate members by two months.

BT Capital Partners has been designated as licensed and intermediary consultant with a view to carrying out a public offering of bonds worth maximum EUR3 million, issued by Agroserv Mariuta, the company behind the Laptaria cu Caimac dairy brand, according to shareholders’ decisions published in Romania’s Official Journal.

Romania’s promotion to the Emerging Market status had immediate effects on the Bucharest Stock Exchange, with the total trading value with the shares of companies listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB) exceeding half a billion euros in September 2020, over threefold higher (+260%) than in August 2020 or September 2019.

Romania’s modern industrial and logistics space market reached 4.72 million square meters at the end of the first half of 2020, up 5% on the year, accounting for over 9% of the stock of the 17 largest markets in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), per a Colliers International report, which expects the market to exceed 5 million sqm until the end of 2020.

Most companies (80%) say that adopting remote work is the new norm on the labor market, and over 53% currently have created and implemented arrangement policies in this respect. Of the remainder (47%), more than 50% of companies anticipate that they will refine or implement a remote work arrangement policy by the end of 2020, a PwC global survey shows.