Romania's National Confederation for Female Entrepreneurship (CONAF) will introduce a mechanism to track business decisions on investment, hiring and technology adoption in an effort to identify shifts in the economy before they become visible in official statistics.
"The economy does not begin when it appears in a table. It begins when an entrepreneur decides to invest, hire, postpone or abandon a project. Economic indicators tell us very well where we have arrived. Entrepreneurs' decisions, however, can tell us where we are heading," CONAF founding president Cristina Chiriac said in a statement on Monday, agerpres reports.
The initiative will be introduced as part of CONAF's national De Vocatie Antreprenoare forum, which began its third edition in Suceava on August 28. The mechanism for monitoring business intentions and decisions will be incorporated from the forum's next stage in Sibiu and subsequently used at events in Piatra Neamt, Arad and Ploiesti.
CONAF said the aim is to observe economic developments before the effects of decisions made by companies are reflected in official indicators.
"An investment is approved or postponed. A job is created or disappears. A technology is adopted or ignored. Capital is put to work or remains on hold. Viewed separately, these are management decisions. Taken simultaneously by thousands of companies, they become the economy," the organisation said.
Chiriac said discussions at the first stage of the forum had focused particularly on the cost of adopting artificial intelligence and its potential impact on the labour market.
"In Suceava, we started with two questions related to artificial intelligence - how much does its adoption cost and how will it transform the labour market? But the same equation now appears in almost every business decision: there is a cost to action and a cost to inaction. We want to better understand the economy that is taking shape before we can read it in the statistics," she said.
According to CONAF, the initiative comes as technology, capital and the labour market are changing simultaneously, increasing both the cost of poor business decisions and the potential cost of failing to act.
The Suceava forum brought together entrepreneurs, company founders, investors and specialists for discussions on artificial intelligence, capital, financing, risk and business growth.
CONAF comprises 33 branches, three federations, 16 employers' organisations and 55 associations, representing 15,000 companies with more than 245,000 employees.
