FIC: High growth without infrastructure is not possible in the long run

The Foreign Investors Council (FIC) believes infrastructure is key for Romania's future development and it is also one of the three pillars Romania must focus on if it is to become one of the top ten EU economies.

2017-09-21 09:49:38

"Romania′s transport infrastructure development has been slow over the past decades due to a combination of lack of prioritization, discontinuity of decision making and poor planning and execution," said FIC. "The figures support this. It used to be that people argued infrastructure would spur economic growth. Romania is rapidly approaching the point, if it has not reached it already, where the current infrastructure will act as a break on growth. To reach a parity in terms of living standards with western economies, Romania needs at least two decades of strong economic growth. The current growth rate will be impossible to maintain in the medium and long term without immediate and massive investments in infrastructure."

According to the Global Competitiveness Report 2016-2017, Romania ranks 88th out of 139 countries when it comes to the quality of its infrastructure, its position having deteriorated by two places compared with the 2015-2016 ranking.

Also, Romania's country report 2017 made by the European Commission shows that Romania has the highest rate of public investment in the EU in the last decade and although overall performance improved, the country ranks last in the EU in the perceived quality of infrastructure.