Almost 60% of Romanians (59.5%) who took part in a survey stated that their financial situation has worsened compared to last year. The main causes were price increases for energy, food, and fuel.
The figure represents a 10% increase from an average of 49.4% in the previous two trimesters. And the future does not look any better for those interviewed. Slightly more than half stated that they expect their situation to worsen in the coming period, up from just over 40% a few months ago.
The data comes from CEC Bank’s trimestral financial Barometer, developed in partnership with banking comparison maker FinZoom.ro.
The prices of utilities (gas, electricity) were pinpointed by over a third of respondents as the main causes that led to the deterioration of their financial situation. Roughly one-third of respondents said the same about increases in food prices, while over 20% said that they were most impacted by hikes in fuel prices. Only 9.4% declared themselves affected by the increase in interest rates, while 40.5% of respondents declared that they have at least one loan. The risk of the devaluation of savings is mentioned by only 6.23% of the respondents.
A similar ranking can be found in the list of reasons for concern according to the respondents. The price of utilities, mainly gas and electricity, are the main concern of roughly a quarter of respondents, while 18.7% are most concerned by the increase in consumer prices. Under 9% of respondents cite the war in Ukraine as a concern, and only 6% do so for the pandemic.
Worries over rising utility prices can be partly explained by the fact that expenses connected to housing take up more than 40% of an average family’s monthly budget. For almost 14% of respondents, these expenses represented 60% of their monthly budget.
Loan payments take out roughly 27% of the monthly budget of borrowers in the survey, but the average level of indebtedness is still at a comfortable level. Those who took out consumer loans in recent years mainly used fixed-interest loans and were not affected by the increase in interest rates. Conversely, variable interest rates prevail in home loans, and those who have such loans (21.9% of respondents) are much more affected by interest rate increases. Nevertheless, over half of the respondents stated that they had no difficulties in paying installments in the last 6 months.
The survey involved over 1250 respondents from across Romania and was conducted online. A third of respondents are between 25 and 40 years of age, and a third have higher education.
