Romania must focus on encouraging domestic production and exports, in the context in which opportunities for “made in Romania” products will be significant in the medium and long term. Investors’ fears about the safety of investments and “made in China” products are likely to accentuate the phenomenon of relocation of production facilities in Europe, and Romania must take every administrative and logistical effort to be on the list of attractive countries for greenfield investments, shows an analysis made by experts from Moneycorp Romania.

Moneycorp experts say that in an economy severely affected by the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, many investors will look with reluctancy at the Chinese market, the world’s largest exporter. The fact that the supply chains were interrupted so easily, due to the health crisis, will make many rethink their portfolio of suppliers and their location, the focus being on bringing production closer to the sales area, to the end customer.

In the new international context, in which the USA and the EU are rethinking their macroeconomic strategies, Romanian companies have chances to win significant contracts, given that the range of export products has increased significantly in recent years.

“Romania recorded, in 2019, the best result in history in terms of exports, of 69 billion euro, in line with our estimates,” says Cosmin Bucur, general manager of Moneycorp Romania.

“However, even if the year 2020 started well, the lockdown period, generated by the pandemic, as well as the next months of gradual relaunch of the activity will strongly erode the export potential. In this context, our estimates indicate a level of exports of 60 billion euro this year and a return to the threshold of 70 billion euro in 2021″, he added.

For comparison, in 2010, the Romanian economy reported exports of 37.3 billion euro, half of 2019’s. About 76.6% of exports went last year to European Union countries.

“The evolution of Romanian exports will depend, mainly, on the way in which our main trading partners from Europe, Germany, Italy and France will recover economically. The premises are still in the area of uncertainty, but, given the huge financial packages announced by Brussels for the relaunch of the European economy, everything will depend on how the eurozone economies will work together for economic recovery,” Bucur added.