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Geography, agriculture and the economy

Geography

Romania is in south-eastern Europe, and it shares borders with Bulgaria, Hungary, Serbia-Montenegro, Moldova and Ukraine. It has a land area of 238,400 km2 and a population of 21.6 million, with a population density of about 93 inhabitants per km2. The population growth rate is less than 0.0 per cent.

The country comprises three agro-ecological zones: the lowlands of the Danube plains, mountainous areas, and the hills and tablelands of Transylvania. The Apuseni and Carpathian mountains are in western Transylvania. About 63 per cent of the land is agricultural and two-thirds of that land is arable. The varied types of land and climatic conditions support a wide range of farming systems.

Agriculture

Land privatization was one of the first reforms to be carried out in the early 1990s as the country moved towards a market economy. With the collapse of markets and lack of working and investment capital, the restructuring of the agricultural sector led to reversion to low-input, subsistence farming.

The government transferred land use rights to 4.3 million rural people, but half of them were over 60 years of age and nearly 40 per cent of them were pensioners. According to Romanian estimates pensioners own 65 per cent of land in rural areas.

Agriculture’s share of gross domestic product (GDP) has been declining steadily and in 2005 was about 10 per cent.

Smallholder farming is traditional, with low technology and minimal use of purchased inputs. Crops grown by small-scale farmers are used to feed the household and are not usually sold. Income is likely to come from livestock production.

Economy

Like other countries in Central and Eastern Europe after the fall of communism, in the late 1980s Romania had an economy that was on the verge of collapse after 40 years of rigid central planning. The transition to a market economy that began in 1990 has been a difficult one. Only in recent years economic reforms — liberalization, privatization and deregulation — have been pursued systematically as part of an overall reform agenda. In January 2007 Romania joined the European Union.

The large flow of remittances from migrants gives a strong boost to the economy. Some 12 per cent of Romanian households have at least one member working abroad. Estimates put the number of Romanians working abroad at between 900,000 and 1,8 million people, a number that is growing with the free transit across borders now that Romania is part of the European Union. In 2005 remittances and wages received in Romania for workers abroad reached an estimated total of US$4.7 billion.

Source: IFAD