Publicat pe 14/02/2023

Bucharest, February 14, 2023: The Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Romania (CCIR), in partnership with First Bank and Profit.ro, organized on Tuesday, February 14, the conference EU Funds – We finance the relaunch of the economy, in order to identify the optimal solutions for a sustainable economic development with the help of European funding. The event brought together representatives of public authorities involved in program management, as well as experts in the management of funds allocated by the European Union (EU).

In a period of uncertainty, with multiple economic risks and challenges, the chance for development belongs to economies that manage to see and act beyond short-term crisis survival solutions that set in motion investment mechanisms and strategies and of business growth with long-term impact. For Romania, the key to such development mechanisms lies, at the moment, in the ability to use the important financial resources made available by the EU through several funding programs.

“There will be an acute lack of companies that have the power to complete projects with European funding. Statistical data indicate that 80% of the companies that matter in the Romanian economy and that deal with infrastructure works in the area of energy, water and environment have contracts for the next two years. Obviously, we have to think of solutions. One of them would be the way the auctions are run. I have always argued that the price of an auction should be determined by the market. Feasibility studies done in 2016-2017, which fixed certain prices, were done before the pandemic. Today, all these prices, with all the indexation formulas, are outdated. When the market sets the price of the auctions, then the companies will be interested, they will have the appetite and they won’t take much risk. All the big companies that went into insolvency, went in due to the fact that they won a tender, and later they were no longer able to financially support a project,” said Mr. Valeriu Iftime – president of the energy and environment committee of the CCIR.

“From the point of view of the banking system, we can say that we are living in more turbulent times, but I don’t think they are more turbulent than before. It’s true, we passed the pandemic period, followed by the war in Ukraine, rising energy prices, and obviously everyone expected an economic crisis. There will be no economic crisis. Statistical data show the fact that the European economy and implicitly that of Romania have proven to be much stronger in the face of these challenges than anyone expected. Rightly so, people believed that after the pandemic, economies would go into recession. This did not happen. Recently, the European Commission published the forecasts for the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) at the European level, for 2023-2024, and things are very good, Romania being in the first positions”, said Mr. Henk Paardekooper, CEO – First Bank.

“The call for digitization projects in order to strengthen the competitive position of companies, from the SME Digitization Program, will be launched on February 15, after several postponements, and on the same date the guide for large investments in digitization. In the case of the call for projects that will be launched now, the grants are between 20,000 and 100,000 euros, and the funding is granted for the basic activity of the companies, not the administrative activity, the score being calculated for the digitization of production and service activities. Also on February 15, the guide for large investments in digitization, with a budget of 150 million euros, will also be launched for consultation. In this case, the financed projects reach up to 3 million euros”, said Mr. Marcel Boloș, Minister of Investments and European Projects.