Bucharest, Jan 22 /Agerpres/ - Romania's economy could grow by almost 3% in 2025, according to a presentation made by Alexander Boersch, chief economist and coordinator of the Deloitte Germany Research Division, at a specialist conference in Bucharest

'Overall, the global economy grew at a rate slightly more than 3% in 2024 and it's likely to grow again at 3.1% in 2025. So, not much change on the overall level. However, we see a bit of movement under the surface. We see that the Asian economies are doing very, very well: India has been a growth champion for the last years, and to a certain degree; India replaced China as the growth engine of the world economy, growing at rates of about 7%. We see In Europe a certain return to growth, so the eurozone is forecast to grow at a bit more than 1% and Europe as a whole a bit more. The Eastern European countries, Poland and Romania, are growing at rates of around 3%, potentially much more than in 2024. And Germany here is at the end of the list. So, for Germany, we are likely to see higher growth in 2025. However, we will not see very dynamic growth rates. Our forecast for Germany assumes a growth rate of 0.5%, which is essentially a ‘glass half full and half empty' question. It's better than last year, but it's certainly not a great performance,' Boersch told a Deloitte CFO Summit 2025 videoconference on the expectations of CFOs for the complicated year 2025.

He mentioned that the forecasts for 2025 must be watched very closely, especially after the first quarter once we know what will happen in the trade's space.

He was also asked about how Romania could be affected by the US levying tariffs on European imports.

'Romania is certainly affected by this new trade landscape, more in an indirect way because Romania's direct exports to the US are not that big. However, the indirect effects are felt through German and European exports. In this way, it will probably be a challenge for Romanian exports. The same is true for the quite weak German economy and especially the German industrial sector. However, I think there are also some positives. What we see is an increase in political bloc building in the world, globally and we see a certain amount of 'freeshoring' and 'friendshoring.' This suggests that Romania could benefit from increased investments that might come back from China and could generally benefit from this 'friendshoring' trend,' said Boersch said. AGERPRES (RO - author: George Banciulea, editor: Andreea Marinescu; EN - editor: Corneliu-Aurelian Colceriu)