At the beginning of April, the Ministry of Economy announced that discussions would be initiated to establish the options of all industrial sections so that the authorities would elaborate Romania’s re-industrialisation strategy by the end of 2013.
Although since 2010 the government representatives have announced the launch of public debate of the document on Romania’s re-industrialisation (strategy which has been executed by the Group of Applied Economics-GEA, with the Association for Economic-Social Studies and Prognosis), this year the authorities announce the elaboration of another strategy which has the same purpose. In Romania, the period 2010-2013 was dominated in political terms by many changes of ministers, including of government, which determined the authorities to give up different development strategies (for most of the sectors) and to announce the intention of elaborating other policies and measures practically aiming at the same objectives: increase of competitiveness, improvement of business environment and attraction of foreign investors, development of economic sectors, etc.
Three years after the launch of the last strategy for stimulating the industry increase, the Ministry of Economy announced in April the initiation of consultations with each of the 80 different industries, on the topic of Romania’s re-industrialisation. “We have identified 80 different industries and we will have discussions with each of them, so that in the beginning of June, with the members of the commission which elaborate the re-industrialisation strategy, we could make a summary with options of all regions, industrial sectors in Romania. Romania’s Re-industrialisation Strategy will be completed by the end of this year and will be assumed by the Government”, declared the Minister of Economy, Varujan Vosganian, in a conference.
For this purpose, the directions which underlie the industrialisation aim at reducing the state influence in the economy and the launch of privatisations. “The main directions for the re-industrialisation are the privatisation and the state withdrawal from the economy, with certain exceptions of strategic nature, the involvement in the peak industrial areas and the integration of the manufacturing industry in a European common strategy, which should not be protectionist, but which should support industries. Besides these, we need the promotion of the Romanian industry abroad, respectively economic diplomacy”, declared the minister.
The first component of the strategy is the elaboration of an economic map of Romania, which at present does not have a real economic geography, and then after the execution of the strategy, all ministries involved will be required to offer the support and contribution for the implementation of policies.
According to the authorities, industrial parks can be a variant for Romania’s promotion to foreign investors. “We are working to a text which should promote industrial parks whose features, facilities which they represent at the level of positioning, of infrastructure, will be published on the official website of the ministry”.
Romania has 50 industrial parks, many of them in a “performing situation”, an others being under creation, and out of the 40 clusters, 13 are functional, the rest of them waiting for partners. Nevertheless, out of the 23 great industrial fields, 17 are at a high rate in a great competitiveness gap compared to the European Union, the foreign investments being the ones to stimulate the activities. “Romania has an economy which can be characterised rather complementary than competitive compared to the economies of other EU member states. It is clear that the only way for Romania to reduce socio-economic gaps to the average of EU member states is competitiveness increase”, declared the Coordinator of industrial policies, the state secretary in the Ministry of Economy Adrian Ciocănea. According to him, the Re-industrialisation Strategy will be correlated to the EU industrial policy and to the programmes for attraction of European funds in the budgetary period 2014-2020.
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