THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE AGRICULTURAL SECTOR TO ECONOMIC GROWTH IN ROMANIA

Although agriculture is one of the main economic sectors of Romania, its contribution to GDP has constantly decreased over the last 28 years, from 23.00% in 1989 to 4.37% in 2017. This phenomenon is explained by the fact that Romania’s economy past from being an economy based on an agricultural structure to one based on services. Even though the contribution of agriculture to GDP formation is declining, Romania still has the largest share of the agricultural sector in the GDP structure from all the countries of the European Union – about 3 times higher than the European average, and also the highest share of agricultural land in the total land area. These aspects show that within the member countries of the European Union, Romania is the country most dependent on agriculture, with the largest number of people involved in agriculture and with the largest share of agricultural areas in total. In this context, the paper analyzes the impact of the agricultural sector on Romania’s economic growth, between 2000-2017. The empirical analysis is based on three independent variables (agricultural production, public expenditure on agriculture and direct investment in agriculture) and one dependent variable (GDP at constant prices). The data panel consists of information provided by the NIS (National Institute of Statistics), and the data are analyzed using multiple regression.