Article - October 16, 2007

 

Making a decision to invest or not to invest a new Eastern European EU member such as Romania is obviously not a problem for large investors. They have the financial power and the logistics to gather information from a variety of sources, including special attention from the local authorities.

Things tend however to get more complicated when it comes to small and middle-sized foreign investors. These investors have limited means of gathering information vital for making taking a decision to expand or not to expand to the new Romanian market. This article is a short guide for those who need to find out how they can obtain information about Romania in order to take the right business decision.

If you are just thinking about expanding to Romania , then you can start by reading some official documentation on the country on http://www.arisinvest.ro, the website of the Romanian Agency for Foreign Investment. There is some interesting information on public-private partnerships, taxation, information about existing infrastructure, human resources and statistics of foreign direct investment in Romania .

Of course, the website only contains general information. Another more useful resource would be http://www.aneir-cpce.ro, the Foreign Trade Promotion Centre S.A., a non-governmental trade promotion organization. This website contains an economic profile of Romania , statistical information on Romanian wages, business environment information and some important Romanian laws in English (such as the Romanian Company Law no. 31/1990). Another place you can find Romanian commercial laws translated in English is http://www.lexadin.nl/wlg/legis/nofr/eur/lxwerom.htm including Romanian Trade Register laws.

And that’s about it with official or semi-official resources, time to get some practical help!

Once you have a basic idea on how you want to proceed then it’s probably time make a few contacts who help you with the Romanian start-up. An idea would be to visit www.RomanianLawOffice.com, the website of a Romanian Law Firm specialized in assisting foreign investors in the country. Their website also contains quite a few articles on Romanian legislation. Whatever their website does not contain you can probably obtain by dropping them a quick email. They would be able to advise you about on-going costs when owning a Romanian business and related legal aspects. There is also the need of hiring a local Romanian accountant ( send us an email at theromanianclub@yahoo.com to recommend you an accounting company with important experience dealing with foreign investors).

There is also another matter to take into account: for some activities the Romanian law requires certain permits from different authorities. An example would be the establishment of recruiting companies in Romania . Obtaining these type or permits is almost never a straightforward experience so it would probably be advisable to hire a Law Firm to handle interactions with the respective authorities.