The Ministry of Economy, Commerce and Business Environment, altogether with the Ministry of Public Finance are preparing a new state aid scheme for small projects.

Costin Borc, Minister of Economy, declared that so far, the state aids were accessible mostly to multinational companies, as small enterprises could not associate with major projects: "We do not want any discrimination between the Romanian and foreign capital, that is not even possible, but we are thinking that there are investors that could develop smaller projects and benefit also from state aids. The Government's wish is to support production anywhere in Romania."

The ways state aids are awarded to companies were also a subject tackled by the minister, explaining how the process should be transparent and compliant. Also, state companies that benefited from these in the past decades created disadvantages to real competition and prejudiced enterprises that worked with them and finally did not get paid.

"Favoring state companies, either through hidden state aids, either through privileged relations with other companies, focusing their resources in political purposes, these only decapitalized companies they made business with, distorted the acquisition process, through more or less fair biddings. We hope that the mechanism for professionalizing these enterprises will be continued by the next Government, so that the disadvantages be turned down because now they are a brake for the economy in engines for development through establishing a healthy competition in the market", added Borc.

Borc reminded about the commitment of the government to depoliticize state companies, but explained how this should be a long term commitment by involving the whole staff in a company, and not only by naming a professional CEO.

by Mihaela Constantin