Romania is the 6th most attractive European country for investments over the next three years, according to the 2012 report „The European Attractiveness Survey” conducted by the consulting company Ernst & Young (E&Y).Thus, Romania is more attractive than the Czech Republic, Turkey, Switzerland, Netherlands, Italy, Spain and Sweden. The first five positions in the ranking are occupied, in order, by Germany, Poland, United Kingdom, Russia and France.
Despite the fragility of the Eurozone economy, investment flows to Europe continued to grow in 2011, the number of investment projects is considerably higher than before the crisis, rising by 2%, from 3757 in 2010, to 3906 in 2011, and the number of jobs generated by foreign direct investments increased by 15%.
U.S. remains the largest investor in Europe, developing 1028 projects, which represent 26% of the total. The number of investment projects developed by the U.S. increased by 6% in 2011, reaching the highest level registered by the Ernst & Young’ survey in the past 10 years.
Investors are quite confident in Europe's ability to overcome the complex and multiple difficulties that it faces, so Western Europe is considered the most attractive destination for foreign direct investments (FDI), after China, while Central and Eastern Europe ranks third.
The economics of Central and Eastern Europe lead regarding the investments in manufacturing industries. Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Czech Republic have attracted 53% of the new jobs created in the automobile industry. These countries have attracted large projects that have competitive advantages of costs and trading partners like Germany, where the most important industrial clients are.
Professional services and software production sectors have received the most FDI in Europe, with an increase of 19% and 15% in 2011. Together, these two sectors have attracted 28% of all projects developed last year,
generating over 16,000 new jobs.
The number of FDI projects increased also in the automobile industry, creating the largest number of new jobs: 37,790.
Sectors that registered the largest decline in 2011 were financial intermediation services, which decreased by 16%, and electronics, which fell by 8%.
For Romania, the National Bank of Romania data shows that foreign direct investment in 2011 reached the last nine years minimum, 1.917 billion €, and continued to decline in 2012 to 490 million € after the first four months.
But Romania has the advantage of a promising growth rate of GDP compared to Europe's and a valuable human capital, more investors being attracted by the renewable energy sector.
E&Y announced that the estimated value of mergers and acquisitions completed in the first five months in Romania is about 800 million dollars, almost double than the level recorded in the same period in 2011. transactions whose values have been announced by the parties –only- were of 330 million $ compared to 216 million $ in January-May 2011.
Extrapolating, E & Y estimates for the first five months a total market of 798 million $ compared to 408 million $ in first five months of 2011.
