Bucharest City's two airports - Henri Coanda and Aurel Vlaicu - have joined the top five Q1 2017 highest rising airports in terms of passenger traffic increases, according to news from the Airports Council International Europe cited by the Bucharest National Airport Corporation (CNAB) in a press statement.

In the group of airports welcoming between 5 and 10 million passengers per year Henri Coanda (OTP) was third, with a 21.5-percent increase, after Reykjavik-Keflavik (Iceland) and Kiev. Bucharest Baneasa (BBU) was first in terms of growth in the group of airports welcoming less than 5 million passengers per year. It was followed by Foggia (Italy), Nis (Serbia), Zadar (Croatia) and Oradea, according to ACI Europe.

Three percent of the total Romanian companies represent the engine of the domestic economy and half of them are in difficulty, according to the third edition of the CITR Group study on the evolution of the impact companies between 2013 and 2015.

The number of these impact companies is shrinking, from 23,384 in 2013 to 19,564 in 2015. If this shrinking trend persists, the whole economy may be affected by contagion shows the CITR study. All this in the context in which Romania is not able to generate enough new entrepreneurs to compensate for the imbalance in Romanian business.

Romania, alongside three other EU Member States, had a government deficit (calculated based on ESA methodology, the European Accounts system - e.n.) of 3 pct or more of the GDP, according to a preliminary estimate released on Monday by Eurostat. In contrast, at the end of 2016, Romania was among the EU Member States with the lowest level of government debt against the Gross Domestic Product (37.6 pct). Eurostat points out that it has not made any changes to the data reported by the Member States. The Eurostat data differ from the figures presented in the execution of the consolidated general budget for 2016, according to which last year ended with a 18.3 billion lei deficit, 2.41 pct of the GDP respectively, on the increase by almost one percentage point as compared to the negative balance of 1.47 pct of the GDP in 2015. 

Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu declared that the switchover to the euro will be possible only after the Romanians' incomes get close to earnings in other European Union member states.

"Let's make sure that this monetary convergence is done in parallel with the convergence of incomes. We believe that the switchover to the euro can be done only after the Romanians' incomes get close to earnings in other EU member states," Grindeanu told the meeting of the interministerial Committee on the switchover to the euro, held at the Victoria Palace of Government quoted by Agerpress.