Key messages from the edition
- Moldovan economy continues its decline. In June 2015, the Economic Leading Indicator (ELI) - an index calculated monthly by Expert-Grup and which aggregates six main macroeconomic indicators, is down 1.6 points from the previous month, to 87.8 points (a value below 100 shows recession). Thus, after a certain stabilization at the beginning of the year, ELI continues its downward trend. This suggests that immediate prospects for the national economy are worsening, associated with external constraints (economic crisis in Russia and Ukraine, Russian trade restrictions, security crisis in Ukraine and the slow recovery of EU economics) and internal ones (political volatility, banking crisis and a restrictive monetary and budget policy).
- Domestic and external demand are falling. In June 2015, total exports of goods decreased by 19% y-o-y, largely driven by the decline of exports to CIS countries (mainly Russia and Ukraine) by 23% y-o-y, and to other countries (mainly Turkey) with 26% y-o-y. At the same time, it is worth noting that exports to EU are increasing for the third consecutive month at a gradually increasing rate (+0.4% in April, +1.1% in May and +2.7% in June, y-o-y), evolution which could reveal the effects of Association Agreement/DCFTA with the EU.
- Domestic consumption was affected by falling remittances, which plunged 29% in June 2015, especially of those from Russia (26% decrease), which account for 52% of the total transfers.