PNL wants equality for foreign investors

The National Liberal Party (PNL) has asked the Government and Prime Minister for the second time in the past week to reconsider the ordinance on the non-resident status, to eliminate both the “absurd” conditions imposed on the foreign investors and any sort of discriminations between them, the Liberals’ spokesman Eugen Nicolaescu on Wednesday said. The Liberals argue Ordinance 194/2002 includes anti-economic and anti-social measures, because it sets harsh discriminatory conditions for establishing a business in Romania. This normative act imposes 100,000 euros as minimal threshold for any non-resident planning to invest in Romania, except for the citizens of the EU member states. “PSD (Social Democrat Party) ignored PNL’s criticism on this issue, but PM Adrian Nastase soon after the meeting with his Hungarian counterpart announced that the Magyar citizens planning to invest in Romania would have to have only 15,000 euros. This is nearly seven times less than what the other investors outside the EU, the US, Japan and Canada should produce,” Nicolaescu specified. He feels the Premier’s decision is most discriminatory because it distinguishes between Hungarian investors and the other investors in the area, which still need to come up with the 100,000 euros. ZF