The foreign direct investment (FDI) in Romania has crossed the $10bn threshold, reaching $10.09bn in September, the Romanian Investment Agency (ARIS) says.
Although the authorities deem this as a success, if looking at the region's level the $10bn are less than half the FDI attracted by other countries in Central and Eastern Europe.
For instance, the FDI volume attracted by Poland until last year amounted to some $43bn, while Hungary's was of $23bn. In addition, the Czech Republic managed to attract $9.3bn in FDI in 2002 alone. ARIS says the data provided by the National Trade Registry Office show the annual foreign investment in Romania was of about $768 million a year throughout 1991-2002, having peaked at $1.53bn in 2001. The industrial sector attracted the largest investments - 54.3% of the total, followed by services - 16%, trade - 10.7%, transports - 7.8% and retail - 5.7%. The authorities' target for this year, at least as scheduled in the governing programme, is attracting $1.8bn in foreign investments. The data provided by the Trade Registry for the first nine months show the capital subscribed for the foreign capital companies was of $879.1 million, up 13.1% from the same time last year. The agency uses two sets of figures, i.e. those provided by the Trade Registry and those provided by the National Bank of Romania (NBR), but cannot compare between the two for the moment, because the NBR data only cover the first eight months of the year. The NBR data show the foreign direct investment in Romania amounted to 883 million euros between January 1- August 31, 2003, up 19% compared with the same time last year, when it reached 742 million euros. The Romanian Investment Agency announced, that since October 2001, when Law 332 on promoting direct investments likely to make a significant impact on the economy (over one million dollars) was enforced, through October 2003, a number of 226 investment commitments worth $1.9bn were submitted. Eighty-seven of the total 226 projects were actually completed and they amounted to $716 million. The main investment fields were telecommunications (18 projects with $368 million committed), energy industry (5 projects worth $338 million), machinery construction industry (14 projects amounting to $134 million) and wood, cellulose and paper industry (19 projects totalling $157 million). Of all the projects submitted, only one targets an over $100 million investment, while most of them (178) target $1 to $10 million investments. Top foreign investor in line with the provisions of Law 332/2001 is Holland - $243.6 million (12.55% of the total), followed by Austria -$185 million and Germany - $157 million. The regional distribution shows the Bucharest-Ilfov development region has attracted most of the investment projects - 109, which are worth $1.01bn. Law 332/2001 stipulates a series of incentives for the investments worth more than the equivalent of $1 million, regarded as direct investments likely to make a significant impact on the economy.
miruna.lebedencu@zf.ro
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