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Corlatean: Trade exchanges with Czech Republic top two billion euros in 2011, historic record
The evolution of the trade exchanges between Romania and the Czech Republic set a historic record and last year topped two billion euros for the first time in 20 years, Romanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Titus Corlatean told the Romania-Czech Republic investment forum on Thursday.
'In the past few years Romania's exports to the Czech Republic have increased, still there is an imbalance in the trade balance and this is why I am encouraging the companies in Romania to be more incisive when identifying the business opportunities with the Czech Republic,' said the Romanian official.
The Foreign Affairs Minister said that there were numerous bilateral business opportunities that were not enough exploited and encouraged the business environment to be extremely active in this respect as well as the Romanian-Czech economic cooperation in accessing some third markets, where every state has specific competitive advantages.
'The developments in the past few years imposed a strategic reorientation of the international structure of production and trade to the emerging economies or to the areas that are less affected by the crisis. But at the same time it is a constant priority of Romania's Government to intensify trade exchanges with traditional partners such as the Czech Republic and to identify new cooperation opportunities,' said Corlatean.
He mentioned transports and infrastructure, agriculture, environment protection, food industry, energy, especially the renewable one, tourism, IT and communications, the healthcare system and the fields connected to the automotive industry as major business opportunities in Romania.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs said that Romania's economy started growing in 2011 and this year an about 1 percent growth of the GDP was expected.
'The IMF has recently included Romania in the four countries of the emerging Europe that will see a positive economic evolution in 2012 and it estimates an economic growth of about 2.5 percent for 2013, the highest dynamics in the region after Slovakia,' Corlatean.said too.
The Foreign Minister also regarded as investment opportunities the industrial park at Jucu, near Cluj (western Romania), the high tech laser project at Magurele, near Bucharest, which includes a component from the Czech Republic and one from Hungary, as well as the Czech investment made at Fantanele-Cogealac (south-eastern Romania), where there will be the largest producer of wind power in Europe.
During the above-mentioned forum Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs Karel Schwarzenberg invited the Romanian companies to open offices in the Czech Republic.
'Romania is very important for us as a starting point to the Black Sea and even farther, but I think that businessmen from Romania would better realize that it took them only two or three hours to go from the Czech Republic to the golden triangle of Europe, Milan-Munich-Rotterdam. I think this is why people from rich countries such as Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium, and Koreans and Japanese set up their companies in the Czech Republic,' said Schwarzenberg.