The American Chamber of Commerce in Romania (AmCham) has helped the economic development of Romania. Ionuc Simion, president of AmCham Romania, spoke in an interview about AmCham’s contribution and priorities, as well as specific aspects that prevent some investors from coming to the country (infrastructure), what is happening in the labor market, what changes will be brought by joining the OECD, the only quota, Romania’s assets, NATO and the areas of action on which Romania should focus.

He gave the interview on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of his presence in Romania.

Short statements:

• There has not been a single tax measure on which we have not provided feedback from our members on the usefulness, viability and sustainability of the tax measure

• It is not the level of income tax rates that decides or influences the decision of a foreign company to invest or not in Romania, but rather the market, the size of the market

• Joining NATO increased the level of security of investments in our country

• Accession to the European Union brought stability and predictability from the point of view of the institutional framework

• Joining the OECD should be a new project for Romania: if Romania joins the OECD, it will be among the top 40 countries in the world in terms of the infrastructure, institutional and legislative framework necessary to stimulate the attraction of any investment, regardless of the geographical area to which it will be addressed later.

• The low quality of the infrastructure cost us dearly in attracting investments

• Romania needs a highly skilled workforce, even if some say this is not a problem

• If Romania aims to grow by 3-3.5% per year, then with the current labor force of 5.1 million people, another 1 million people are needed.

• Who to take to Vaslui? Work can be. She didn’t qualify because she didn’t have a point. And if you build a factory in Vaslui, what do you use to get everything you produce out of that dirt?

• The low quality of the infrastructure cost us dearly in attracting investments
• It takes three whole days to take finished products from Vaslui to anywhere, the Black Sea, the Danube, or the western border.

• What would happen if we withdrew Black Sea gas in 2018? Imagine where I was now. It should be a cross-party approach

• In Hungary and the Czech Republic, the largest investments are attracted through a professional agency that directly contacts any foreign investor and says: come to us, it doesn’t matter what you ask for, we will give it to you. Even if maybe I don’t give them, I bring them there, I keep them.

How AmCham has been involved in changing the economic landscape for 30 years

“We have, I would say, the strongest tax committee at the level of professional organizations in the country. This was very important because there was no tax measure that we did not engage with through feedback from our members on the utility, viability and sustainability of the tax measure,” Simion said.

There are specific elements that AmCham has acted on over time, he said.

“For example, (one – no) the introduction of tax breaks for programmers, which is perhaps now, recently, a lot of abuse. But let’s not forget, this measure, which was targeted, well targeted, made it possible to stop the emigration of labor from Romania, highly skilled labor, to any other countries and at the same time made it possible to create an industry, the IT&C industry, which is currently the , which brings the highest added value to the share of the labor force, which is a maximum of 2%,” explained the president of AmCham.

• Now we create 7-8% of the gross domestic product. There is no other industry that generates the same.

“There is another very large collective work to which we made an extremely important contribution, namely the adoption and transfer of European legislation into national legislation,” he added.

• With Romania’s accession to the European Union, fundamental changes in legislation took place. Or for this reason, there were not enough specialists of the Ministry of Finance to ensure it.

We helped with all the energy and all the resources we had to transfer as smoothly as possible, as easily as possible, with a correction mechanism as quickly as possible, which would allow, if you want, to integrate Romania from the point of view of taxation in the structures of the European Union.

In the interview, you can learn more about AmCham’s involvement in the economic development of Romania, as well as:

• What are Romania’s current assets in attracting investors
• What will the accession to the OECD mean in practice and how will it help Romania
• How the problem of transport infrastructure has affected us and continues to affect us
• Name 5 areas of action that AmCham wants to help the political class implement
• How is the problem of population and labor force reduction affecting us?
• How the introduction of a single quota helped the economy

Article based on AmCham