Romania’s investment perspective, still positive. However, current economic policy must be changed, AmCham survey reveals

According to an American Chamber of Commerce in Romania (AmCham Romania) survey released on Monday, country’s recent economic landscape coupled with improving macroeconomics has attracted increased foreign investor interest.

Romania offers, in their view, competitive advantages such as localization and availability of a wide variety of resources, market size and potential, with 75 percent of them sustaining that Romania offers numerous opportunities for business.

The main competitive advantage in their opinion lies in the well-educated human capital and at a low cost compared with other EU markets. The main constraints mentioned by investors were the use of taxation as a political tool, rather than an economic one (87 percent), poor infrastructure seen as an obstacle to business development, and last but not least the corruption phenomenon mentioned by 61 percent of them.

The survey results reinforce the need for shaping a Country Project for Romania and validate the AmCham Romania agenda, that through its actions and recommendations envisaging decision makers is positioning as a reliable resource-partner in the public-private dialogue in view of increasing Romania’s economic competitiveness and substantiating the number of investors.

“Investors need a stable and predictable legislation framework in order to choose to invest in Romania. Implementing a multi-generational Country Project, Project Romania, through which our country to maximize its potential, will lead to defining an articulated sustainable development strategy remaining high on the AmCham agenda,” Ionut Simion, President AmCham Romania stated. Moreover, he stressed that there are state companies (SOEs) listed on Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB) who do not know how to use the money obtained in this way and don’t have projects to enable them to exploit these amounts of money.

Despite the poor perception in key areas of policy, Romania’s investment perspective remains positive, with 88 percent of CEOs declaring that their investment in Romania is meeting or surpassing expectations. Among the measures that Romania should implement in order to increase the investment attractiveness respondents mentioned the reform of the education system to include development of more applied knowledge oriented toward market needs, clear, simple, predictable regulations and legislation, continuing the fight against corruption, and drawing up an economic growth vision for the next decade.

The survey was conducted among 200 executives on Romania’s investment environment and the competitive advantages that the country offers to those interested to open or expand their operations in the region.