#FIS2019 | Ionut Simion (PwC Romania): “Romania has to stimulate entrepreneurship in order to be more successful”

Romania needs to do much more to stimulate entrepreneurship in order to become a highly developed economy, said Ionut Simion, the Country Managing Partner of PwC Romania and President of AmCham, said in his keynote speech at Business Review’s Foreign Investors Summit on Tuesday.

Simion opened the Summit by talking about Romania’s path of development in the past 30 years and how the country can harness its potential in the upcoming period in order to be seen as a developed country.

“It’s been three decades of capitalism and democracy, and we’ve had big achievements, but also some big disappointments. Most of us think that Romania is still looking for a model of economic development that will help us fulfill our destiny, so it’s not easy to say why Romania is where it is today. Compared to Poland, which will be used as a benchmark at this Summit, Romania did not have real opposition to the communist system. Indeed, we had a revolution, but once the system was gone, we had nothing to put in place. Meanwhile, Poland and the Czech Republic had civil movements which fought against communism and came up with real alternatives,” said Simion.

Ionut Simion listed three important measures the Romanian business environment needs the Romanian government to take in order to help it develop: develop physical infrastructure, effectively implement sound and sustainable fiscal policy, and address the workforce deficit and the lack of a clear strategy in education. 

“A survey conducted by PwC in March showed that 62 pct of Romanian CEOs are concerned or extremely concerned with the lack of adequate physical infrastructure in Romania – and by that we don’t just mean roads, but also railroad, schools, and hospitals. At the same time, we rank among the highest in Europe in terms of our digital infrastructure, yet we’re the last in the EU’s digital society index. We have a strong IT industry but we’re not capable of monetising it and transforming our society into a digital one,” he said.

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On the lack of workforce, Simion noted that a study conducted by PwC showed that in the next 5 to 7 years, Romania will need about 1 million more workers in order to maintain an economic growth rate of 3.5-4 percent.

“We must also talk about digital disruption – in the coming years, thousands of jobs will disappear due to technological advancements, while thousands of workers will have to be requalified,” Simion said.

Ionut Simon added that the Romanian government needs to work towards improving the country’s ability to attract foreign investments and absorb EU funds. 

“It’s true that we absorbed about 90 percent in the last cycle, but consider how much 10 percent of EUR 33 billion means and how much those extra funds would have helped the country. We should do our best to get as close to 100 percent as possible,” he argued.