The Romanian state can’t be corrupt and uncompetitive by itself, it has a partner in the private sector, said the Romanian President Traian Basescu (in picture) at the launching of the ‘2011 Romanian Competitiveness Report’ conducted by AmCham Romania. He added: “Nobody denies the responsibility but it should be divided and assumed by both sides, the state and the private sector”.

Talking about competitiveness and the private sector, the Romanian President referred to the banking system, asking: "How competitive was it to give loans to people with just their ID card?” Traian Basescu then referred to other investors in the country’s economy, such as Nokia, which decided to leave Romania at the end of this year. He added that a state official can’t be corrupted without someone offering a bribe first, and a ministry can’t pay 50 percent more for a contract if there isn’t a consultant prepared to take the extra cash.

Talking about the country’s public sector, Traian Basescu said that Romania’s public administration can’t be competitive until the “career criteria is functional and transparent.”

When asked to choose three priorities to trigger growth in Romania’s competitiveness, the President replied with workforce training, followed by accelerating the highways program and much simpler legislation for investors.

In his opinion, the world’s most important politician is the market. “The world’s greatest politician is not called Barack Obama, or Merkel, or Sarkozy, or Basescu, or Papandreou. The name of this politician is ‘the market’,” he said. The President added that the conflict between political and market forces could be ended by a 2-3 year 'armistice.'

However, 2012 “is a high risk year for Romania because there is the risk of diminishing the capital flows from parent banks, beyond the bearable,” said the President. Traian Basescu raised this matter in November this year, when he asked foreign banks to maintain their capital flows to Romania, adding that it would be inappropriate to cut these flows after obtaining huge profits in this country. “I would like to express my concern about the possible behavior of some banks. I want to believe that the announcement made by the Austrian National Bank of reducing the Austrian banks’ capital flow to non-euro area countries was either an error or a misunderstanding of the effects,’ said Traian Basescu during the “Analysing Romania’s future economic potential’ conference organized by The Economist.

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com

(photo source: Romanian Presidency)