“Price increases will mainly target the products brought from China. The IT market will be the most affected by the appreciation of the exchange rate and is likely to shrink (…) Prices of notebooks and tablets will grow by up to 15%. (…) Other categories of products, which include parts made in China, such as small home appliances, will be indirectly affected as well,” CEO Flanco Retail, Dragos Sirbu, said Thursday.
The U.S. dollar has gained 12% against the Romanian leu since the beginning of 2015. Thursday, the leu’s indicative against the U.S. dollar lost 1.35% on the day to 4.1282 units, after the conclusions of Federal Reserve indicated a slower pace of rate hikes in the U.S.A.
Sirbu expects the Romanian electro-IT market to grow 10-12% in 2015. Also, Sirbu thinks the planned decrease in taxes will have a positive impact on consumption.
The durable goods market in Romania grew 13.7% in 2014, to over EUR2 billion, driven by sales offers, especially Black Friday and winter holiday deals, according to market research company GfK. Growth in the fourth quarter of 2014 was due to higher sales in five of seven monitored sectors: electronics (+23%), telecom (+19%), large household appliances (+19%), small household appliances (+14%) and IT (+1%). The printers, multipurpose machines and consumables market and the photo market continued their decline in the fourth quarter, falling 1% and 9%, respectively, according to GfK.