Foreign companies control farming

The low price of the land and the possibility to attract non-repayable funds through European programmes has made many foreign companies invest in the Romanian agriculture. According to the statistics released by the National Union of Realtors (UNAI), over 80% of the farming land in Western Romania have already been bought by foreign capital companies registered in Romania. Similar figures apply to the commercial space in big cities.

“The companies most interested in this business are those with shareholders from the European Union, as they will be allowed to transfer the ownership of the plots of land to their individual shareholders, as soon as Romania joins the EU. Some companies are only buying land to resell it to other foreign companies,” UNAI chairman Petrisor Morar explained.

The farming land concentrations are found in Satu Mare, Arad, Oradea and Timisoara, where foreign companies hold over 80% of the available land.

Considering the West of the country has run out of vast stretches of land, the trend shows the investors are migrating towards other areas, counting either on EU funds to support agriculture or on the rise in the price of land, as explained by Morar.

The legislation does not allow foreign citizens to buy land, but this does not extend to the foreign capital companies registered in Romania, which are Romanian legal entities.

Citizens in the EU will be allowed to get property deeds over land following Romania’s integration in the single European market, once the capital account is deregulated. According to Petrisor Morar, the commercial locations in the big cities in the country are experiencing a similar situation. He explained that in those cases, the foreign investors could afford to pay more than the Romanian business people, and tried to recover the costs by creating monopolistic structures.

Banat attracted most of the foreign investors, namely Italians and Spaniards. They bought at insignificant prices thousands of hectares from the peasants in Timis County (in Remetea Mare, Giarmata, Deta, Jimbolia, Carpinis, Jamu Mare and Iecea). miruna.lebedencu@zf.ro