Authorities fail to assess foreign investments

Direct foreign investments, an indicator pointing to economic credibility abroad and guiding the Government’s macroeconomic policy, cannot be assessed in Romania with a unitary methodology, as there are at least three sources providing information on the market.

The most credible source is the central bank, but the National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies (INSSE) and the Development and Prognosis Ministry resort to the Commerce Register, which actually presents the situation of subscribed share capital.

“I had the most uncommon experience,” Leonard Cazan, Development and Prognosis minister, told Ziarul Financiar.

“I wanted to see the situation of foreign investments in 2000 and I received two variants from the Commerce Register: the first, which was utterly absurd, estimated foreign investments to have stood at 960 million dollars, while the second, more credible, showed that these were worth 243 million dollars,” the Development minister explained. The gap derives from different working methods.

“I cannot even consider the $300m level presented as annual foreign investments that have entered Romania lately, in order to draw an estimate for the next four years,” says Leonard Cazan.

He claims that the actual value of foreign investments in Romania will amount at 700-800 million dollars this year, hoping that, by the end of the year, he will have the methodology to prove if he was right or not.

“Statistics need improvement. Now I am certain that the statisticians working in the territorial offices only collect data and they cannot supply the local authorities with economic surveys,” the minister, who is also in charge with running the INSSE, stated.

Cazan says that the activity of the statistics institute is rather “confined” in this field, as it actually takes over the data supplied by the Commerce Register. The Ministry also relies on the same source, as it lacks its own methodology to monitor direct foreign investments.

Constantin Chirca, INSSE vice-president, admits that this institution does not have a methodology to scale the investments level and the only statistics it can actually provide are “the value of the subscribed share capital and the countries investments are coming from.”