Wind Power Romania offers an unprecedented opportunity to learn from and network with board-level executives and experts as they lead a full agenda packed with information and networking opportunities of more than 7.5 hours.

The conference will be led by more than 30 speakers including board-level experts and policy-setters from organisations such as Enel, Iberdrola, CEZ, Alerion Clean Power, Wolf Theiss and the Romanian Ministry of Economy.

Read more here.

Bulgaria, whose labor costs grew by 8.6 percent on the year in the second quarter, posted the highest increase among member states, EU’s statistics office Eurostat said.  In the EU bloc, second quarter labor costs were up 1.6 percent on the year, compared with a 2.1 percent annual growth for the previous quarter.

More here.

These new EU members from East Europe are all NATO members and they also benefit from funds related to the environment and security as part of the ENVSEC initiative in conjunction with the United Nations.
Until 2013, the European Union is granting non-reimbursable Structural and Cohesion Fund grants of about 308 billion Euros to undertake projects in a variety of sectors. Many of these projects will be performed by the private sector, in partnership with public authorities and is offered to all the new EU member states from Central and Eastern Europe.
In addition, the Swiss, via its bilateral agreements with the EU, have allocated the sum of about 770 million Euros to the new EU member states, with an additional 200 million Euros for Romania and Bulgaria, pro rata to their respective population as of June 2010

All these funds and grants are intended to boost these countries economies and reduce the economic and social disparities in an enlarged EU. Thus at the 4Esp 2010 Fair, these projects are presented for eligible funding to the European Union, NATO, and the Swiss, plus the G8 countries not members of the EU namely USA, Cananda, Russia and Japan.

Join us at the second edition of the Austrian Business Forum to get in touch with the Austrian investors and managers doing business in Romania!

Program:
09:00 – 09: 30 – Guest registration
09:30 – 11: 30 – Panel discussions
11:30 – 12: 00 – Buffet lunch

Confirmed panelists:

• Rudolf LUKAVSKY, Commercial Counsellor – Austrian Embassy to Bucharest
• Kurt WEBER, Managing Director – Horvath & Partners Romania

Moderator: Prof. Dr. Joerg K. MENZER, Managing Partner – Noerr Romania

Topics include:

• How do Austrian investors feel the effects of the recession in the local economy?
• The far-reaching presence of Austrian investors across all sectors of the Romanian business landscape and theire turnaround expectations
• The Austrian presence in the banking industry. The profile of the Romanian banking client and what does it say about the local economy. Where are the future areas for development?
• The insurance sector: where do Austrian companies see their future involvement?
• Constructions and infrastructure: taking a clue from the Austrian model.
• What can companies looking to enter the local market learn from the experience of Austrian companies in heavy industry, manufacturing, recycling? What other sectors might be of interest in the future?

Romania ranks second in EU10 by labor cost

Romania ranks second among EU10 member states by the hourly labor cost, chief economist of the World Bank (WB) Bucharest-based office Catalin Pauna told a conference devoted to the release in Bucharest of the July 2010 edition of the EU10 Regular Economic Report. The document shows that Romania’s reverting to economic growth also depends on its capacity to absorb European funding that can supplement state investments, thinned by fiscal adjustment needs.

More details about the report.

I’m from Eastern Europe and banks over here don’t make any efforts to help small businesses. High taxes, obscure policies and bad services happen not because there isn’t enough competition but because there isn’t a culture of small business banking. It took almost one month to have one of my cards re-issued, and they were expecting to go pick up the card from the same location where it was issued 2 years ago (which was way far from my current location).

The thing is that while we had some big crashes in the financial industry Worldwideand the credit went down, the basic banking operations still exists; unless we stop using money, all businesses need a way to cash in money from the customers. So it seems that no matter how hard things are, banks here

So I decided to have a look and see how things are looking.

In a total contrast, each time I look at the financial institutions in U.S. I’m amazed at the efforts they are putting into marketing their services. For example, to grow the sales force, North American Bancard created a site for the North American Bancard Agents and created the North American Bancard Linkedin company profile. So they are using social networking!

Also, they do provide much more services that a regular bank here (solutions for Credit, Debit, EBT, Check Conversion and Guarantee, Gift & Loyalty Cards and much more).

They seem to have a quite aggressive plan to grow their customer base, which is currently around 100000 businesses (it’s amazing what competition and a strong culture of supporting small businesses can do) . And are there any jobs? Sure, look at the North American Bancard Jobs.

IFBE aims improving and developing the local franchise market, as well as establishing a better connection with the international franchise community. Thus, IFBE will also host exhibitors from various EU countries.

Moreover, IFBE is the only exhibition in the region that offers its exhibitors the chance to relate to Romanian investors, entrepreneurs and businessmen and to interact with local mass-media representatives.

On the other hand, IFBE offers its visitors a tremendous opportunity to get valuable information directly from the source and helps them in the decision-making process by highlighting the proper franchise business according to their budget and competences.

Romania – an entry to the Balkan & Black Sea region

The franchisors attending IFBE 2010 will have the opportunity to research closely the Balkan and Black Sea region – a developing area, but also an ideal place for expanding their franchise concepts.

Doing business in Romania preview

Probably the most important thing to understand is that business over here don’t always follow the usual market logic. For example, you would expect that is the economy is weak the exchange rate should go up? Not necessarily. You would expect that because the per capita income is not so great you won’t see any expensive cars on the street? Well, you’re wrong. Plenty of Ferrari here.

Legalities when starting a business in Romania

The BucharestExpat article basically says you should get legal help if you want to start a business here. Truth is that laws are complicated, incomplete and always made to get you on the wrong foot. It almost seems that running a business here is more about getting papers done than providing a service for your customers. Plenty gray areas too.

Employees

You can read about dealing with Romanian employees on the original article. My view is that you can classify the Romanian employees in about 3 categories:

• highly skilled professionals willing to prove what they can do. I wrote some articles a few years ago that Romanian employees working abroad are usually highly appreciated because they need to prove what they know and what they can do.
• average employees that are satisfied with what they do and have accomplished and don’t intend to make changes
• haters. They hate their job, hate their boss and do almost everything possible to avoid work.

Marketing and advertising

You would be amazed about the huge quantities of advertising is done on the streets, on TV and everywhere else. Probably because we didn’t have marketing at all 20 years ago, it’s still very easy to obtain sales with basic advertising and marketing.

The good parts

I would start by saying that the best news is that there are plenty of opportunities and untapped market areas. There is less competition than you would expect in a lot of areas which basically means you just need to find a good niche and money will follow.

Workforce is cheaper, including for the highly skilled professionals. Although with Romania joining the European Union wages have increased (and cost of life) you can still get good deals on workforce.

It’s in the European Community. It offers most of the advantages offered by the European Community (example: no taxes when exporting say to Germany) while production costs might be cheaper.