Foreign companies' solutions to overcome the crisis
From 'First Home 3' scheme to organising the European Football Championship in 2020, foreign investors have put together a programme that should see the GDP up by 11.6% until 2015.
The Foreign Investor Council (FIC), which groups together the
most powerful private companies, proposes to the government 12
measures to get the economy out of recession after two years of
crisis during which the authorities have improvised several reboot
plans, with most of them left only on paper.
"We are confident in a 2011 economic rebound through this set of
measures. The situation is alarming. The private sector and the
authorities have to do what's necessary to boost investor
confidence and avoid a third year of recession. Romania has an
economic potential that has to materialise. We are now making a
call and a partnership offer to the authorities said Mariana
Gheorghe, chief executive of Petrom at the presentation of the
programme.
FIC proposes a set of 12 measures that would see the economy grow
by 11.6% in real terms until 2015, budget revenues up by 8.5% and
250,000 jobs created. The 12 steps are part of a more extensive
plan that includes 80 measures.
BCR, the biggest bank on the market, helped devise the plan, so
that a number of measures suggested would directly benefit the
banking system: cut of minimum mandatory reserves in foreign
currency from 25% to 20%, creation of subsidised loan facilities
for SMEs through a joint contribution of banks and public sector,
establishment of a development bank/fund to improve absorption of
European funds, the start of the First Home 3 scheme.
FIC also proposes keeping the flat tax at 16%, reverting to 19% VAT
and renegotiating the 2011 deficit agreed at 4.4% of GDP with the
IMF, so that sufficient funding can be directed to
infrastructure.
FIC was established in 1997 and comprises 118 foreign-held Romanian
companies, whose investments in Romania total 30 billion euros (two
thirds of the foreign investments in the Romanian economy). The
turnover of the FIC members stood at 36 bilion euros in 2009, that
is over 30% of GDP.