The state wants to fully privatize the companies in which it holds minority stakes

The Ministry of the Economy, Trade and Business Environment (MECMA) intends to begin a program by which all companies in which the state holds less than 50% "would be privatized immediately", in order to bring revenue to the budget, Borbely Karoly, secretary of state in the Ministry said yesterday. As to what concerns the major state owned companies, such as CFR, the first stage of their optimization would be to cut expenditures, by laying off people, said the representative of the Ministry of the Economy, who attended a seminar on the logistics market. He said that the government"s priority is to restructure the public administration, which is "currently oversized". Another step proposed by the Executive is decentralization, according to Borbely Karoly, who stressed that "Romania needs political stability, consistency. Even if we admit to not communicating properly, the fact that the Government is stable and there is a preoccupation to complete every point of the agreement with the IMF, which is a factor that would prevent investors from leaving Romania". In his opinion the motion of censure filed by the Social-Democrat Part will not go past through the Parliament.

Borbely Karoly said that Romania is affected by the second wave of the European crisis, given the fact that exports to the EU account for 74% of Romania"s total exports and the fact that most imports come from the same region. However, Romania has great potential for growth, in his opinion: "We are a EU member state and we have a sea opening. We have an industrial background as to what concerns the training of employees in the industry, and in the decentralization process of local authorities, they have an opening towards investors". Borbely Karoly considers that a tighter cooperation between investors and the local authorities is needed, as well as between the companies that are interested in investing in Romania and the utility companies.

Foreign investments in Romania stood at EUR 10 billion in 2008, and in 2009 they began to decrease to EUR 5 billion. Also, according to the MECMA official, Romania absorbs roughly 7-8% out of the 5.9-6.1 billion Euros that Romania draws annually from the EU funds.