Romania’s payment request number two under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) is still frozen, because, unfortunately, many of the reform milestones are not yet met, especially those regarding the transparency of corporate governance in state-owned companies, deputy chair of the American Chamber of Commerce in Romania (AmCham Romania) told a specialist conference on Tuesday.
„If we look at the last 30 years, Romania has always been reactive. What we need is a longer-term vision, beyond PNRR, which, after all, is a tool. We will become a net contributor and then the approach is completely different. If we look at the European Commission’s records on Romania’s implementation of PNRR, we are in the middle. We are neither bad nor good. We have the payment request number two still frozen since December, because, unfortunately, many of the reform milestones are not yet met, especially those regarding the transparency of corporate governance in state-owned companies. On the other hand, we have the example of Italy and its 5th payment call involving EUR 11 billion… There is a very wide variety beyond PNRR and we are generally talking about public investments. I believe that there are two very important elements that must be taken into account, namely the quality of these investments and their economic return. Beyond the execution, so volumetric, the PNRR will indeed be short-term,” Nemoianu said.
She added that, under an „alternative government programme”, the American Chamber of Commerce in Romania proposes the implementation of a state aid scheme for investments of over EUR 100 million.
„There is the President of the European Commission who says that we will have a Europe of investments. Wonderful, but how do we do it? We started a campaign within the American Chamber of Commerce in 2022 that also went to the United States. We have this annual Romanian-American bilateral economic forum that we are doing, in which we are trying to position Romania as a regional hub, and not only, for the reconstruction of Ukraine, but also what the Caucasus and the Balkans mean. It depends a lot on what kind of mentality we have and how these efforts can be brought together with state agencies, but also with embassies (…) An example that I give you and that you will see in ‘Priorities for Romania’. It has a lot of proposals. It is an alternative government programme. An example is the need for state aid schemes for investments of over EUR 100 million or at least the increase of the total ceiling to 500 million or 500 plus, because otherwise areas that need to be strategically developed, such as energy or transport infrastructure, cannot have those resources to be able to make the leaps we need at the moment.”.
The government investment programme, the objectives of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) for 2024-2025 and the European funds from the multiannual framework for Romania are just some of the subjects discussed at the 5th edition of the RoInvest conference organised on Tuesday in Bucharest.
AGERPRES
