Perceptions of the Foreign Direct Investors on the Romanian Business Environment

Abstract

In Romania the foreign direct investment had a delayed beginning in comparison with other former socialist countries. To this situation many factors contributed: the political, economical and legislative instability, the sometimes hostile authorities’ attitude a.s.o. Some of the changes from the business environment are easily anticipated, but the implications of other ones are very difficult to be estimated. In this paper we study the perceptions of some Romanian foreign direct investors using an own investigation realized at more than a year from the adhesion. In the investigation we interviewed 32 executives of FDI. The subjects included different aspects of the business environment from Romania: macroeconomic stability, labor force cost, corruption, fiscal aspects, infrastructure, political situation, cooperation with local authorities a.s.o. We also took into consideration the main positive and negative aspects of the adhesion felt by the foreign direct investors. All these aspects were connected to the expectations the executives had before the adhesion. Although the sample we used is too small in order to allow generalizations, the results of our investigation may bring indices of the foreign direct investors’ perceptions about the Romanian business environment.

Keywords: Business Environment, European Integration, Foreign Direct Investors

JEL Classification: F21, F23, F29