The British-Romanian business center has been set up by the UK Embassy in Romania and the British-Romanian Chamber of Commerce. The Embassy will offer the Chamber of Commerce a grant of about EUR200,000 through the project.
“We are taking the opportunity today to take a new step forward in the support that we give to the commercial relationship and to the economic relationship between Romania and the UK. (…) This is part of a project that is in 20 priority markets around the world. We are providing the support to British companies in markets like Mexico, like Russia, like India, Brazil, and in Europe we’ve selected two priority markets for particular support to the commercial relationship. One of them is Poland and the other one is Romania. We see these as the emerging markets inside the single market and we’ve been delighted to see strong growth in the trade between Britain and Romania, strong trend also in British investment in Romania,” UK Ambassador to Romania Martin Harris said Tuesday, present at the signing of the agreement setting up the business center.
The measure targets to increase the facilities and support to British companies that come to Romania to trade and to invest, as well as to Romanian companies that are engaged in the UK, he added.
“The aim is to set up a new British business center, to do that with the grant from the British Government to the Chamber of Commerce, and through that we hope by 2017 to see a 60% increase in the trade between Britain and Romania,” Harris said.
Present at the event, UK Minister for Energy and Climate Change Edward Davey said Romanian has great potential in the energy sector, which may attract investments from the UK.
“Potential for Romania to be a real powerhouse in Europe is fantastic. The natural resources you have here are really breathtaking,” Davey added.
There are about 4,300 companies with British capital in Romania and the UK is the 11th largest investor on the local market, with EUR4.6 billion.
The 4,300 companies are present in the consulting, infrastructure, IT, agriculture, auto, financial and legal services sectors.
Last year, trade between Romania and the UK amounted to EUR2.9 billion, up from EUR2.7 billion in 2011. British exports to Romania stood at over EUR1.6 billion last year, while imports from Romania were worth EUR1.3 billion.
UK investments represent 27% of total investments Romania attracted in the first half of 2013.