Romanians’ buying appetite is increasing: over 60 pc would spend more, Cetelem’s L’Observatoire shows

Economic key data are globally good in Romania, considering its GDP growth rate of 4.8 percent in 2016 which encouraged indeed the Romanian consumers to spend more.

According to L’Observatoire, Cetelem’s yearly report on household consumption in Europe and confidence level of the Europeans, 62 percent of Romanians would spend more in the coming 12 months, a 4 percent rise compared to the previous year, but really lower is compared to 2010, when 89 percent of the Romanians questioned said they would spend more.

“It is a normal evolution, mirroring the pace of the economy and the warm up of the crediting activities. These two elements contribute to the increase of the consumers’ confidence, which is the highest in Romania compared to all the other countries in the research”, Pascal Roussarie (photo), Head of Sales & Marketing Central Europe Region, BNP Paribas Personal Finance, stated at Bucharest in a press conference.

Romanians consider that 2016 was a year rather stable in terms of purchase power, as 46 percent of the respondents to a poll, or 5 percentage points more than in 2015, said their financial power remained the same as in the previous year.

Only 23 percent of them said their purchase power increased last year, a drop of 5 percent against 2015, while 32 percent (1 percent more) said their financial strength decreased, according to L’Observatoire report carried out at end-2016 in 15 countries, Romania included. Cetelem’s pan-European poll was made on a sample of 12,000 persons aged 18-75.

The appetite for saving continued to be lower than for spending as 48 percent of the respondents indicated so – 4 percent fewer than in 2015. This figure though is a big progress compared to seven years ago when only 11 percent of the Romanians were thinking about saving.

50 percent of the Romanian respondents said they believe their personal status will improve in the next 2 years. As a comparison, the highest rates, close to Romanians’ self-confidence, were registered in Denmark (49 percent), Slovakia (44 percent) and Portugal (42 percent). At the opposite tip of the top, the lowest rates of confidence in the improvement of their own status were indicated in France (18 percent), Italy (19 percent) and UK (20 percent).

“Another interesting aspect which L’Observatoire report reveals is the link put by consumers between the confidence in their country’s future and the personal income. Actually, respondents in 11 of the 15 countries in the poll put the rise in salaries in the top 3 propositions that would boost the confidence in their countries”, added Bogdan Spuza, Head of Marketing Products, CRM and Insurance.

The Bulgarians were the most depending to the rise in salaries: 59 percent of the respondents, followed by Polish (53 percent), Romanians (50 percent), Hungarians (49 percent) and Portuguese (48 percent). For Germans, for example, less social inequality was top of mind (44 percent), while in France the top confidence booster was indicated a drop in unemployment (42 percent of the responses), as well as in Austria (39 percent) and Denmark (41 percent). In the UK, not surprising, 40 percent of the respondents indicates the control of the immigration as main driver for higher confidence in the country’s future.