The growth of the Moldovan economy will restore, but the quality of this growth will worsen in 2016-2017, Expert-Grup forecast says.
According to another edition of research “MEGA – Analysis of the economic growth in Moldova”, which the Independent Analytical Center submits twice a year, Moldova’s GDP growth in 2016 will be 3.4%, in 2017 – 5.5%. In case of a pessimistic development scenario, the economic growth will be 2% and respectively 3.6%. The experts point out that, in spite of the quantitative indicators, a significant deterioration of growth is expected due to three key factors: the decline in the labor productivity, the consumption growth and the reduction of the investments in the fixed capital. They point to the lack of the economic growth’s stability in 2016-2017 years.
Moldova’s GDP in the next 5 years will grow annually by about 3-4%. However, in order to get closer to the indexes of the Central and Eastern Europe countries, it is necessary to increase the growth rate at least 2-fold. According to Expert-Grup forecast, the agricultural production in 2016 will increase by 19.4% (2017 – by 5%), industrial production – by 1.6% (6.1%), exports – by 3.9% (7.3%), imports – by 3.6% (5%). The construction is expected to decrease by 12.5% in 2016, but the following year the growth will recover to 5.1%, the remittances will decrease by 5.6% in 2016 (in 2017 the receipts will be at the level of this year), the volume of the investments will decrease by 15.6% this year, but will increase by 7.4% in 2017, the state tax revenues will increase by 3.7% and, respectively, by 6.3%, the wages in the economy will increase by 1.9 % (in 2017 – 4.8%). The inflation rate is forecast at 6.5% in 2016 and 4.5% in 2017.
The experts mark that currently there is a risk of a superficial assessment of the economic trends: the situation is not bad, but many details are alarming (growth trade imbalances, the reduction of the formal employment, reduced productivity, reduced investment, the official consumption growth). Such data can be misleading and may undermine the stability of the economic policies. A separate problem is the increasing gap between the growth of the real wages and the labor productivity. In the long-term, the problem is the growing deficit of the payments balance. The experts recommend the authorities to speed up the justice reform and implement the public administration reform. In this way, it will be possible to stimulate the investment activity, the labor productivity, country’s competitiveness growth and the stability of the economic growth model. (InfoMarket/Business World Magazine)
