Romania’s joining the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) will bring major benefits for the business environment, debureaucratization, increased lending and borrowing capacity and an upgrade of the country’s rating, Minister of Economy Bogdan Ivan told the conference „Romania and the OECD – The main country project after NATO, EU and Schengen accession”, an event organized on Wednesday by the Presidential Administration.
„We are ahead of the third major country project, after joining NATO and the European Union. Point-by-point and concretely, joining the OECD comes with at least three obvious benefits for the business environment, and the digital economy portfolio places the focus exactly on these themes. Firstly – streamlining and debureaucratization. Once we received that formal opinion on the digital economy, we also started a very clear debate about streamlining and debureaucratization at European level, (…) whereby we estimate that in the next five years companies will save 37 billion euros from reducing excessive red-tape, companies all across the European Union, not just in Romania,” said Ivan.
Secondly, he added, the lending and borrowing capacity for Romania’s large companies and SMEs is estimated to increase and lending costs are expected to be cut by approximately 15% – 20% once Romania becomes part of the OECD.
Thirdly, Romania’s joining the OECD will result in an upgrade of the country’s rating, and in this regard the government has a very clear strategy in place to ensure predictability, Ivan said.
He went on to highlight the need for maintaining political stability and fully implement digital services.
„As long as we don’t have these very clear digital mechanisms, for which we have created the premises in the past year and nine months, and unless we effectively force their operationalization in Romania’s public administration, we will be in the situation of making very clear projections, we will seek European funds, we will plan to attract money from the private sector, but we will hit this huge resistance to change of the budget-paid system, which will hold us back. The only method whereby we can dynamize and modernize Romania is the implementation of all digital services, particularly in public administration,” Bogdan Ivan said.
AGERPRES
