Opinion. Bill Avery: The hard work pays off

One of the challenges we have all faced in these past couple of years is that the local Romanian business climate has just been reeling from one crisis to another. There was the American financial crisis, the European bank crisis, the Greek bail-out and the Romanian taxation crisis. Since early 2009, most firms have been in retrenchment mode, and this pullback, besides hurting everyone’s pocketbook and collective ego, has simply made business life less interesting, or even fun. It is hard to slog it out month after month when you are just getting by.

This Romanian stasis is mainly due to the political leadership, and an unwillingness until recently to engage with the private sector to stimulate hiring and investment. Our event this week will showcase the efforts of business communities to reach out and suggest improvements to the tax code and other issues that cripple Romanian firms. For our part, Business Review has organized more than 20 bilateral conferences in the past two years, from Britain to Kazakhstan, Greece to Holland. Tuesday’s event will attempt to wrap up the efforts we’ve all made to have all our voices heard. And, after all that talking, some of us will no doubt be thirsty, which is why we’ll have a business cocktail reception for our guests and BR Club members.

Since the start of the year, we’ve established www.business-review.ro as the top English-language business site in Romania, with hundreds of new visitors every month. The site is an important way for us to keep our readership informed about upcoming business and cultural events. And our re-design makes a statement about where we want to go, with a bigger and bolder format. After nine years, we figured a change would do us good. Who said business in Romania wasn’t fun?