ING study: Romania, attractive to investors due to the low labor costs

Romania and Bulgaria are the countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) offering investors attractive labor costs, while Poland excels in education, according to a study by financial group ING, quoting a Deloitte analysis.

CEE’s advantages are represented by labor costs and labor availability, while the disadvantages are the confidence that the justice system gives, as well as educational system and traffic infrastructure,

As regards wages, ING points out that they grow faster in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, maybe too fast to be sustainable.

Moreover, the reforms of the education system in Romania and Bulgaria are still pending which suggests medium-term challenges for the labor market, the document also shows.

However, most countries have made improvements in terms of competitiveness. Bulgaria is the best reformer in Central and Eastern Europe in this respect, but compared with Germany, the countries do not record the same performance regarding the infrastructure and educational quality, the study in question reveals.

Investors are very interested in the domestic market of the country or the region (37 percent), while 30 percent want logistics and transport infrastructure, 29 percent want an increased productivity for the company, 24 percent of them are interested in labor costs and 22 percent want a certain level of labor skills, another analysis, conducted by EY reads, ING quotes.

In Q4 of 2016 the adjusted hourly labor cost (working days adjusted) in Romania registered an increase rate of 3.23 percent by comparison with the previous quarter and of 12.33 percent by comparison with the same quarter of the previous year, National Institute of Statistics (INS) data reveal.