NGO says working groups on economy of future must be set up at ministries or local administrations

Non-governmental organisation Initiative for Competitiveness (INACO) wants to convince the central and local public administrations of Romania to build working groups for the economy of the future at the level of the ministries, and the level of local administrations, INACO Chair Andreea Paul told AGERPRES on Tuesday.

"Under this project on European funding, non-governmental organisation INACO has set to train representatives for the local civil society from all over Romania in order to generate their own capacity to put their idea, project or dream they advocate in a public policy proposal. And we have managed to do this in education, in healthcare, in the environment and not only. At the end of this project, we had the courage to come up with our own alternative public policy proposal and we thought to convince the central and local public administrations to set up the working groups for the economy of the future at the level of the ministries and local administrations, the local initiative groups for the economy of the future, so that the proposals may come from the bottom up for a national strategy regarding Romania's competitiveness in 2021 - 2027 born from real problems and real solutions," said Paul.

INACO on Tuesday held a closing conference for its project called "Alternative public policies for competitive local development."

According to the INACO leader, 48 direct beneficiaries were trained, evenly spread over the eight development regions of Romania, comprising leaders of NGOs and trade unions, and local employers.

The project "Alternative public policies for competitive local development," conducted on European funds, co-financed from the European Social Fund through the Operational Programme Administrative Capacity 2014 - 2020 was carried out over 14 months for direct beneficiaries comprising representatives for employers, trade unions, non-governmental organisations and of local public administrations.

INACO, a not-for-profit, non-political non-governmental body, as a beneficiary, is the project leader between July 3, 2018 and September 3, 2019 for "Alternative public policies for competitive local development", totalling 905,748.35 lei, of which non-reimbursable financial assistance worth 887,633.37 lei and a matching contribution of 18,114.98 lei.