Romania's foreign direct investments increased 20 percent in 2022, mainly on account of reinvested local profits and to a lesser extent due to greenfield investments, presidential advisor Cosmin-Stefan Marinescu said on Tuesday at the official session of the "Commercial Diplomacy Week".
"We have a 20 percent increase in FDI in 2022 compared to the previous year, yet we should mention that this increase was mainly due to reinvested local profits, that is on account of the profits made by foreign companies in Romania, and less through greenfield investments, while in the first months of the year FDIs seemingly recorded a setback of several hundred million euros. The slowdown in foreign direct investments appears to follow the decelerating trend of European economic growth, but not only, which in Romania's case calls for prudent policies to support the consolidation of public finances and macroeconomic stability," Marinescu said at the event organized by the Foreign Trade Department of the Romanian Agency for Investments and Foreign Trade.
The presidential advisor opined that, amid the continuous deterioration of the trade balance, which widened almost six times in the last 10 years, certain aspects are becoming worrisome and end up being challenges, namely the deepening of the current account deficit, the strong growth of the trade deficit, but also the deepening of the food sector's trade deficit.
According to Cosmin-Stefan Marinescu, the trade deficit topped 34 billion euros last year, with chemical products accounting for 40 percent thereof. Also, the food sector's deficit widened in the last 10 years from 36 million euros in 2014 to almost 2 billion euros today, although agriculture absorbed almost 37 billion euros in two financial years.
The presidential advisor considers that commercial diplomacy can contribute to mitigating, if not solving some of these shortcomings, can ensure added value and long-term perspective for Romanian products, boosting Romania's attractiveness as an investment destination.
Cosmin Marinescu emphasized that "it is time for us to prove economic intelligence and turn from suppliers of raw materials for foreign markets into producers of competitive goods, of competitive products with high added value". AGERPRES
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