Romania is the only Eastern European country included, as of this year, in the top of the favourite destinations among European Union investors.
According to the "Foreign Direct Investment Confidence Index" compiled by US consulting company A.T. Kearney, Romania ranks 16th in the top of the world's 20 most attractive countries in terms of FDI, outranking Canada, Belgium and Turkey.
Also, EU investors are growing increasingly more confident in the Eastern Europe countries - Romania, Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia, as well as in the Baltic states, which they deem a "Europe's little tigers", the A.T. Kearney survey reveals.
"It is estimated that the common market of those states from Europe's emergent area will attract 10% from the world's foreign direct investment in the next three years," the consulting company's survey also shows. The study was presented on Wednesday by the Romanian Foreign Investment Agency (ARIS).
The poll also revealed that a solid majority of foreign investors preferred mergers and acquisitions to other forms of FDI. In fact, the percentage of those choosing this investment option over other methods increased from 40% in 2002 to 45% this year.
The cumulated turnover of the 1,000 multinational companies that were polled by the American company exceeds $16,000 billion. The companies are based in various geographical areas and deal in many sectors. The answers provided by the companies eyed 64 countries that attracted over 90% of the world's foreign direct investment.
Romania attracted foreign investment worth 989 million euros in the nine months this year, or some $1.1 billion, up 11% from the year-ago period, according to data of the National Bank of Romania (NBR), presented by ARIS.
The Trade Registry, the second source of information used by the Agency, announced nine-month FDI worth 879.1 million dollars, up 13.1 percent as compared to the year-ago period. According to Trade Registry data, foreign direct investment exceeded 10 billion dollars this year, having reached $10.09bn in September.
miruna.lebedencu@zf.ro
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