The top 25 private companies on the Romanian market account for almost one quarter of the GDP, as their combined turnover rose to 20 billion euros in 2005, 33% more than in the previous year.
Last year BUSINESS Magazin calculated that the top 25 private companies in Romania accounted for almost one quarter of GDP in 2004, with a combined turnover of almost 15 billion euros. The financial data for 2005 shows this trend has continued: the largest 25 private companies are still making up about one quarter of GDP, even though their combined turnover went up to 20 billion euros.
The ranking of the biggest private companies that BUSINESS Magazin has put together this year goes deeper than in the previous years, considering that a year with an atypical GDP growth rate (4.1% from 8.4% in 2004 and an average of 5.7% for the 2001-2005 period) requires a larger number of companies in order to derive a clearer estimate of the strength of the private sector in the economy. Therefore, two phenomena stood out in 2005, shown by the number of companies BUSINESS Magazin ranked by their turnovers that became publicly available on the Finance Ministry's website last week.
As far as the top 25 companies go, it is obvious that their economic strength has increased, considering that against a much lower GDP growth they jointly retained a quarter of the national wealth.
More precisely, whereas they stood for a quarter of a 59 billion-euro GDP in 2004, they now account for 25.3% of a GDP worth 79.3 billion euros. Furthermore, even with slower economic growth, five Romanian companies ended last year with over one billion euros in turnover: SNP Petrom, Mittal Steel, Rompetrol Rafinare (Petromidia), Metro and Automobile Dacia.
In 2005, with an economic growth half that of the previous year, the combined profit of the top 100 companies reached 1.7 billion euros, up from 536 million euros in the year before. As regards turnover, out of the 100 companies taken into account, only five witnessed a less than 10% annual growth, while another five witnessed a drop in turnover compared with 2004, and the remaining companies posted over 10% growth. Ten of those even achieved over 100% growth.
It remains to be seen how results will be calculated next year, considering growth forecasts for 2006 GDP are ranging between 5% (most conservative) and over 7% (most optimistic).
The outlook on the 100 companies reveals the centres of gravity in the Romanian economy. SNP Petrom remains the largest company in the economy, with only a little more than 3 billion euros in revenue, an increase of nearly 40% on 2004. Mittal Steel Galati will find it hard to catch up with Petrom, as it registered merely 1.75 billion euros.
Petrom takes the top spot in terms of net profit, as well, with almost 400 million euros, followed by the two major mobile telephony operators, Orange and Vodafone (MobiFon), and by RomTelecom.
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