Romania surpasses Poland in certain criteria, and this is not talked about in the country, said, on Wednesday, the director for Romania of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Victoria Zinchuk, noting that there are many investors who analyze Romania.

“I definitely see a change in terms of realizing what Romania can offer. And then when we look at the numbers, when we really analyze the numbers, how the country is catching up now in terms of convergence, and when we compare with some of the EU countries , I am very surprised, because now we are working on a new country strategy and we have a new diagnosis of the country that will be available to the public soon. I ask our economists: compare Romania here with the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, but what about Poland? Actually, I see that Romania surpasses Poland in certain criteria, and this is something that we don’t really talk about here in Romania. We say that Romania is a second Poland, but no we focus on the fact that there are a lot of investors who are coming, who are looking at Romania, but maybe they are not yet ready to invest. Of course, the fact that we are in an electoral cycle is a natural situation in which people can be a little more reluctant, of course, predictability remains an issue, taxation is unlikely to return to the levels of a few years ago, but at the same time, current government investment in infrastructure and the transport sector is fairly certain that, over the next few years, they will it starts to give results,” said Victoria Zinchuk, according to Agerpres.

She mentioned that the institution remains by its side to support Romania and will continue to invest in the Romanian economy within the limit of one billion euros per year.

Also, Alexandru Nazare, member of the Board of Directors of the National Bank of Romania, said that the investors who are present in Romania are satisfied, but the ability to attract new investors is still low.

“We have a fantastic potential. Okay, we totally agree, we have a very good potential to become even more than the second Poland, because we have certain strengths, different strengths. What we lack, and this is actually the most important thing, we lack ambition. We need to be much more ambitious. We need a strategic agenda for foreign direct investment, and we need this strategic agenda as a priority in the government’s actions, in the sense that it is absolutely necessary to have this “one-stop shop” for FDI, to be able to react in real time, at the speed of the investor. So this is what we need to recover. The administration needs to rethink the way FDI is attracted, not at the level of the official public, but at the level of investors and here we still have a lot to recover,” said Alexandru Nazare.

According to BNR data, direct investments by non-residents in Romania totaled, in the first nine months of this year, 5.362 billion euros, up 3.69% compared to 5.171 billion euros from the same period last year.