Romania says it can join euro by 2014
Verfasst: 12. September 2008 15:53
mehr dazu klickHerald Tribune hat geschrieben:NICE, France: Romania insisted Friday that its fast-growing economy can drive down rocketing inflation and get on track to join the euro currency within six years.
The country of 22 million people is one of the poorest nations in the European Union, which it joined in 2007.
Romanian Finance Minister Varujan Vosganian told reporters in Nice, where EU finance ministers were meeting, that he wanted to get inflation under 3 percent by 2010, enter the waiting room for the euro — the ERM currency band — by 2012 and join the euro by 2014.
He faces a hard task ahead. Yearly inflation in July was 9.1 percent, more than double the euro average, showing one of the fastest rate of price increases in the 27-nation bloc.
Vosganian forecast growth of between 8 and 9 percent this year — far ahead of the sluggish 1.4 percent for the entire EU and 1.3 percent for the 15 countries that share the euro. This would be Romania's strongest growth for the past 20 years.