Active investment funds in Central and Eastern Europe are expecting a negative evolution of the Romanian economy in the following 12 months, a survey set up by the Private Equity Funds in South East Europe shows. Thus, 42.9% of the fund's representatives believe that Romania's economic situation will get worse due to the financial crisis and a similar percent believe that Romania's negative evolution will have nothing to do with the crisis.

A little over 14% of those surveyed are estimating that Romania's economy will be the same as in the last 12 months. Even so, most investors (57.1%) declared that the level of new investments in Romania will remain constant and 14.3% believe that these will grow.

The current financial crisis will not affect regional investment funds considering that 85.7% of their representatives declared that they will invest more in the upcoming 12 months and 14.3% declared that the invested sums will remain the same.

In Romania, investments in the first quarter of the year decreased by 30% as compared to the same period, last year to 195.2 million euro. According to the data presented, the private equity funds invested 475 million euro in Romania last year.