PRESS RELEASE

The Nastase government is hindering
the foreign investments in Romania

Following by the letter the fundamental misunderstandings of the way in which the market economy is functioning at the beginning of the 21st century, the Nastase government generated a new sample of incompetence which places Romania outside the civilized economical area - the Emergency Ordinance no. 194 of 12 December with reference to the foreigner's status in Romania.

Thus, a foreign person who is asking for a long term visa to develop commercial activities in Romania has to be very efficient in penetrating the bureaucratic thicket of over 30 documents among which the ones found at point C clearly represent the cherry of the cake, being the most absurd of its all:

• "the activity has to be profitable to the national economy"; (who is to make the judgment whether an activity is going to be profitable to the national economy, even before it is started?)
• "to hire personnel of the District's Agencies register"; (why would a foreign investor not be allowed to hire, on his money, specialists from other societies, students or even foreign citizens and why must he hire out of obligation only those who are unemployed?)
• "to use only internal raw materials and suppliers". This is generating a whole discussion: we have to work with internal suppliers also when we are talking about the high technology industry, which is using imported components?; is there a must to deal with internal middlemen?; there is somehow an internal suppliers list which is PSD approved?
• Etc.

The Nicolae Ceausescu "thought" and "practice" economical school still makes its presence highly felt among the Nastase government and that is after 13 years of the mentor's disappearance. Nevertheless, elements of novelty are making their appearance and a new vision of the world division is floating around: on one hand there are the citizens of USA, Canada, Japan, UE and Swiss who are spared from the visas and on the other hand there are the other countries, like Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Hungary, The Czech Republic, Poland, countries of South America or Asia whose investments contribution the Nastase government is intending to drastically limit it by this cheap government document.

Within this aberrational context the turning Belgium in Republic by the Romanian Agency for Foreign Investments (ARIS) comes almost naturally.

The Union for the Romanian Reconstruction - URR is demanding the Nastase government to answer the following questions:

• This long list of obstacles in the foreign investor's path represents the government point of view?
• Or this government document is nothing else but another stammering sharing the same faith with the anticipated elections, which will be either the government resignation either the denomination of the 8 local governors!

P.S.: In his attempt of fixing some of the problems, ARIS presented on Saturday, the 25th January, on an emergency level an alteration of the statement, which is only rendering the fragrant dilettantism of the document a little bit commercial.

Thus, ARIS is apologizing to the turning Belgium into a Republic and is adding three more names on the list of the visa excepted countries: Sweden, Belgium and Portugal.
As for the content of the absurd criteria for awarding the visa, ARIS has not found necessary altering a single comma.

Cosmin Alexandru, President
The Union for the Reconstruction of Romania - URR