REGIONAL COOPERATION AND ECONOMIC INTEGRATION

PART V:
In the last years, a series of investments with significant impact in Romania took place,
in different domains, such as: transport (Renault, Ford, Honsel, Pirelli, Continental),
IT (Microsoft, Eriksson and Oracle), electronic industry companies (Nokia, Solectron,
Celestica), construction materials producers (Saint Gobain, Holcim, Lafarge and
Heidelberg), metallurgy companies (Arcelor Mittal and Samsung Steel), in the banking
sector (Erste Bank, BRD-SG , Millennium, ING, ABN Amro), and in the oil industry
(OMV, KazMunai). Major FDI has also been attracted in sectors like electrical&optical
equipment, telecommunications, ITC, pharmaceutics or financial services.
In fact, Romania offers significant potential to those industries that use competitive and
highly efficient technology such as car and car parts (since this sector has tradition and
experience in Romania), electronics and home appliances (due to qualified labor force),
construction materials (due to the last years boom in the real estate market), metallurgy
and R&D. Also, bio-diesel and wind energy are domains in which foreign investors
have expressed interest and intention to develop investment projects, benefiting from
opportunities offered by the investment climate in Romania and the EU norms that support
development in alternative energy.
Recent experience has proven that many foreign companies which have implemented
greenfield projects in Romania decided to expand with new production units. The fact
that they decided for expansion and not relocation proves a healthy stable and predictable
economic environment that offers high profit margins ensuring that the existing capital is
maintained in the economy and new capital is attracted.
In some cases, the choice of investors to move to Romania has been driven by the strategic
positioning of the country. This allows other eastern markets to be penetrated where the
establishment of a direct presence may still be too risky, due to the relative uncertainty of
the operating environment.
An important number of foreign investors are targeting Romania to capture the strong
potential connected to the large local demand - (especially in the field of retail sales
and financial services) and the need to renovate and build up local infrastructure. Many
companies consider Romanian market very appealing in view of its growth potential
compared to the much more saturated western markets, targeting it for the commercialization
and production of cheap products.
Also, when analyzing the drivers of the FDI, it should be taken into consideration the
integration process, Romania being part of the European Union since 1 st of January 2007.
One of the implications of Romania’s accession to the European Union is represented
by the increase of the foreign direct investments (FDI) as they represent a main problem
around which is placed the entire process of quantifying the costs and advantages while
taking into account the present need of capital.
So far, Romania has been one of the main beneficiaries of EU pre-accession funds (some
2 billion EUR in the period 2004 – 2006) and in the 2007 – 2013 period the structural
funds are about 19.6 billion Euro. Strong stimulus will come from the launch of large
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