This is one of the most important conclusions of the ‘Romania 100 de ani de business’ (Romania 100 years of business) conference organized by ZF in Craiova with the support of Banca Transilvania and of audit and advisory firm EY Romania.
“We are education-focused, we are involved in the development of the Romanian education system through many programs,” said Narcis Nita, owner of Biz Solution, a company that sells chemical fertilizers.
“Every entrepreneur must be involved in education otherwise we will be left without workforce over time. The main obstacle for the development of the Romanian companies will be the lack of workforce unless we invest in education.”
Narcis Nita attended the conference along with 220 other entrepreneurs, consultants, managers and bankers. Schoolteacher by trade, Narcis Nita created one of the largest companies in Dolj County.
Labor is one of the most pressing problems companies in Romania are facing today, especially those in the west and south of the country. Entrepreneurs say they have to deal with competition on the labor market because multinationals and public sector pay high salaries.
“We are faced with personnel aging, low personnel retention, and high competition from multinationals on the labor market. Although we do hire young people every month, it is hard to keep them with us, because of offers coming from multinationals for our young engineers,” says Laurentiu Dinu, manager of Spiact Craiova, which provides products and services for rail transport.
On the other hand, the entrepreneurs and bankers say that it is hard to bring back Romanians from abroad to fill the vacancies.
“How do we fix this workforce drain? I think this is a problem we should have realized we had some time ago. I am skeptical about us being able to bring Romanians back home. We should, however, open the labor market to Asians if we want to have economic growth,” believes Mihai Dugaesescu, shareholder of Dumagas Agri, a livestock farming and feed production business.
Tiberiu Moisa, deputy CEO in charge of SME and MidCo with Banca Transilvania, says four million Romanians have left the country so the problem is how to get them to come back. It is unrealistic to expect those who left a long time ago and struggled to build a life for themselves there to come back, he says. The motivation to return may not be that high considering they hear those in Romania talking about the negative things going on in the country, he added.
“I think one can find Oltenians (Craiova is part of the Oltenia region of Romania i.e.), Craiovans everywhere in the world. If we checked to see where Craiovans are the world right now and what they’ve accomplished, we might discover people who are doing very well professionally or financially or who are really influential where they work. Some concrete projects can be devised even together with the local authorities. There is another way to work with all Craiovans abroad. One can have some concrete projects getting all Oltenians involved to turn this place into what they want it to become.”
Unemployment rate in Dolj County stood at 7.5% in September, almost double the national rate, national employment agency ANOFM data show.
Dolj County ranks 13th among counties in Romania by revenue of its companies, 24.4 billion lei in 2017.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)