The participants – companies from France, Romania, Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Croatia, Greece, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro and Serbia – will have the opportunity to identify ways of economic cooperation and investment opportunities, Philippe Garcia, the Mission’s director for Romania, stated in an interview for bursa.ro. “We want to redefine Romania as a primary destination for French investors in Europe. The second goal is to present to the French companies the business opportunities in a whole geographic area whose potential is generally neglected by them. We are talking about Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Croatia, Greece, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro and Serbia. These are small countries that are not in an economic crisis, they registered growth last year and they exhibit investment potential in the energy and infrastructure domains,” Philippe Garcia stated.
The organizers plan to bring to the local market a diversified delegation of French companies. “We expect the presence of 70 companies from France, around 30 Romanian subsidiaries of French companies, 150-200 Romanian companies and 150-200 regional companies,” the Mission’s director added.
Infrastructure, energy, health, agriculture, luxury goods, auto industry and agriculture are the domains of interest for investments in Romania. In what concerns the luxury products domain, Philippe Garcia stated: “We are working on a project through which we would offer to the local market a commercial centre – the Athene Galleries – that would offer 12-15 luxury brands with the most recent collections, at the same price as in all European capitals.”
According to him, for a French businessman Romania should be the first natural destination when he wants to expand on European markets. “From my point of view the quality of human resources and the size of the market are among the biggest strong points. The human resources’ competencies and abilities, especially in engineering and IT, are already recognized by the French subsidiaries present on the market,” Garcia added. He also pointed out that the excess of red tape is making business development harder, although changes are foreseen.
Nevertheless, the French Embassy official perceives the business environment as very stable, despite the various complaints in this regard. “Of all the 60 countries with which we are collaborating, Romania is among the most stable – it’s a European democracy, the GDP is on the rise and it has a huge economic potential. I won’t comment on the government’s fiscal policies although if we look at the information published by the mass-media we notice that the new taxes are not that high,” the UBIFRANCE Economic Mission’s director for Romania stated. (source: nineoclock.ro)
