BUCHAREST, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- Romania has caught up with the average absorption rate of the European Union (EU) funds, Prime Minister Viorica Dancila announced on Wednesday.

"Romania's total absorption rate at the end of 2018 is 26 percent, while the EU average is 27 percent," Dancila told a government meeting citing data of the European Commission (EC).

"Funding for agriculture has a major economic and social importance in this respect. The presented data proves the important contribution... of agriculture to economic growth, as a priority sector supported by the government both through legislative measures and through constant allocations from the budget, but also from European funds," noted the prime minister.

According to Dancila, Romania received in the first days of the new year 807.5 million euros (924.59 U.S. dollars) from the EC in funding provided to the farmers from the European Agricultural Guarantee Fund.

"We will receive in early February a further 452 million euros, which means a total of 1.2 billion euros in European money for Romania's agriculture," Dancila said.

Romania has around 454 billion euros in EU funds allocated in the the 2014-2020 budgetary period of EC and the coalition government led by Dancila vowed to surpass the average absorption rate in EU shortly.

"Between 2007 and 2017, Romania benefited 45.7 billion euros from the EU budget, which account for 2.8 percent of the country's GDP," said central bank governor Mugur Isarescu earlier. He estimated that a 95 percent absorption level of the EU funds in the current multiannual financial framework may lead to a yearly 1.7-percent impulse of Romania's growth of the gross domestic product.

Central and eastern European countries are the biggest beneficiaries of EU funds in the current financial exercise, with about 40 percent of the allotted sums. Poland is the main beneficiary in the region.(1 euro=1.145 U.S. dollars)