Industrial production in Romania went up between January and November 2014 over the same period last year, increasing both as gross series, by 6.3 percent, and as series adjusted by number of working days and seasonality, by 7.5 percent, announces the National Institute of Statistics (INSSE)....more »

The World Bank has revised its initial estimation on Romania’s economic progress, anticipating and advance by 2.9 percent of the Gross Domestic Product this year, according to the Global Economic Prospects report published on January 14, 2015. In June 2014, the financial institution forecasted a higher growth, of 3.2 percent, however, the growth rate recorded over the past year, which was below initial expectations, determined a revision of the forecast....more »

The Romanian Competition Council has sanctioned Metro, Real, Selgros, and Mega Image, as well as 21 of their suppliers with fines totaling approximately 35 million euro (154 million lei) in the investigation on the food retail market which revealed that the companies were involved in price fixing agreements between 2005 and 2009. The competition authority announces that the anticompetitive practices detected concern both agreements setting the reselling price and their actions with respect to sales promotions....more »

Romania’s building industry has slowed its decline in November 2014, the latest report released by the National Institute of Statistics indicating increases both compared to the previous month and to November 2013, albeit overall, construction work dropped by more than 9.5 percent year-on-year in the first eleven months of 2014....more »

Polish hotel group Obris signed with Accor the agreement on the purchase of 46 hotels in Central Europe and concluded the master license agreement, the total price of the transaction amounting to 142.3 million euro....more »

OTP Bank Romania has finalized the acquisition of Millennium Bank Romania, a transaction worth 39 million euro announced in June 2014. As a result of taking over of the bank, formerly part of Banco Comercial Portugues, the market share of OTP Bank Romania will expand to about 2 percent and the newly merged bank is expected to move up to the 13th position among the banks operating in Romania....more »

Industrial production prices continued the decline in November 2014 with a drop by 0.1 percent compared to the previous month, price decreases being recorded both for the local market (-0.2 percent) and for the non-domestic market (-0.1 percent)....more »

The EU structural and cohesion funds’ absorption rate rose to nearly 52 percent (51.81%) in 2014, according to the statistics released by the Ministry of European Funds which indicate an absorption rate 3.5 times higher than at the end of 2012....more »

AXA has announced the signing of an agreement with Certinvest and SIF Transilvania for the sale of the savings and life insurance operations in Romania, transaction which was initially negotiated with Astra Asigurari....more »

Holcim and Lafarge have received clearance from the European Commission for their proposed merger, thus finalizing the list of assets for divestment in Europe, which also includes Lafarge assets’ in Romania, following discussions with the European authority, according to a joint press release....more »