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Lazea (BNR): Salary increases depend on drastic improvement of education system
The Romanians can get higher salaries only if labor competitiveness grows and that depends on the drastic improvement of the education system, said BNR senior economist Valentin Lazea at the conference “Economy: From made in Romania to made by Romania”, organized by the Academy of Economic Studies.
“Higher salaries can be obtained in conditions of higher labor productivity, but that depends on the drastic improvement of the education system. How can you get productivity or have salaries comparable to the Poles or Czechs when the structure of Romania’s population is 14% higher education, 41% high school studies and 45% primary or unfinished studies. So what are we talking about convergence to the euro zone?, Lazea said.
He reminded that PISA tests (a program initiated by OECD) according to which Romania ranks 45th for Maths, 49th for Science and 50th for reading and understanding a text, out of 65 states analysed. “In other words, common people, common high school students, do not understand what they are told,” Lazea pointed out.
The BNR official reminded that there are states like Poland, Slovakia or Hungary where salaries are higher than in Romania by 70%-80%, but which because of labor productivity have unitary costs for labor force similar to that of Romania. “I would say that we could try in vain to increase salaries even by 30% with the same productivity as we get to have unitary labor force costs higher than in Poland, Slovakia or Hungary because they have higher productivity for almost double salaries,” Lazea said.
He pointed out that labor productivity in Romania is one of the factors preventing the development of products “Made in Romania.” The other factors are, in his opinion, difficult access to financing for firms in Romania and the lack of a friendly echo system for innovation.