Romania's consulting market valued at 200m euros

The Romanian global consulting services market is valued at about 200-250 million euros per year, smaller than the Russian, Polish, Czech and Hungarian markets, according to estimates released by global strategy consultancy Roland Berger Strategy Consultants.

Demand for this type of professional services, which has been following an upward trend for the past 3-5 years, will undergo certain structural modifications in the next few years. Thus, consulting services aimed at public administration and IT, as well as strategy and efficiency consulting will gain ground over privatisations.

“The consulting services market has witnessed significant growth over the last 3-5 years, particularly in the field of engineering (prompted by investments in infrastructure and commercial constructions) and IT consultancy. Growth has also been registered in the domain of financial auditing and investment banking, following the development of the bonds market and the existence of several large privatisation projects such as Sidex, BCR or Petrom,” Dragos Rosca, senior project manager with Roland Berger told Ziarul Financiar.

“Another important feature of the Romanian consulting market, over the last 3-4 years, has been the surging interest of Romanian firms (private or state-owned) in the services provided by consultancies, with the Romanian clients already accounting for a significant segment of the portfolio of many consultancies operating in Romania, except for those firms exclusively targeting PHARE or ISPA-backed projects,” Rosca explains.

KPMG, one of the four large audit and financial consulting firms that are known under the name of Big Four, verifies this trend.

“In the beginning, our clients were 100% international firms, but we are now glad to report that our portfolio includes a considerable percentage of domestic clients. This is an encouraging signal pointing to the development of this market, which cannot be compared to ‘mature’ markets, yet,” says Ioana Filipescu, Senior Manager Financial Advisory Service KPMG Romania.

“We are already operating on a relatively structured market, where big players are already present, both with audit services and financial consulting,” the KPMG official says. The company is part of the Big Four, together with PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young and Deloitte&Touche.

adrian.mirsanu@zf.ro