Romania's December industrial output was unchanged from the previous month, in seasonally adjusted terms. The previous month was revised a little higher but 4Q12 was anyway a difficult quarter. It posted a 0.6% quarterly contraction in 4Q12, a visible worsening from the flat performance recorded in the previous quarter and well below the 1% growth averaged in the previous three years.
The worsening is also visible in the annual data as the seasonally-adjusted annual average growth of 2012 was just 0.3%, well below the 6% posted in the previous couple of years. More worrying is that the key manufacturing sector contracted in the past year, by 0.2% in annual-average SA terms.
This piece of data fits in our view that there are strong risks that 4Q12 GDP saw a steeper quarterly contraction than our current -0.1% call and good risks that the 2012 saw a full-year GDP contraction. The flash activity figures will be posted Thursday.
Source: bne