A multinational makes preparations four or five months ahead to bring a foreign manager to Romania and fixed salaries are sometimes up to 50% higher than those of a Romanian manager, according to market information. However, expats can also come to Romania on local employment contracts.
“I came to Romania in 2006, I was part of the management team in charge of Garanti Bank’s Romanian expansion,” recalls Ilgaz Huseyn Kaya, Central Marketing Director within Garanti Bank Romania.
“It’s not easy to come as an expat to a country which is not a member of the European Union and have dozens of stamps on your passport, given that in the beginning I was a temporary employee of the Romanian subsidiary. Only in 2008 did I become an employee of Garanti Bank Romania, and now there are around 15 of us coming from Turkey. My colleagues found it quite hard when they wanted to bring along their families,” he added.
In Romania there are around 20,000-30,000 expats, according to relocation company experts, but only around 15,000 are registered in embassy statistics as foreign employees or diplomats, because many have their own businesses. ZF statistics conducted based on the yearbook ‘Who’s who in business Romania 2010 – The 1000 leading businesspeople,” reveals that around 300 managers from the largest local companies, from 22 different sectors, come from other countries.
Expats that relocate to Romania often have to wait another five months before they can bring their family along, this being one of the major relocation-related problems, are the conclusions of a seminar organized by audit and consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).
It is hardest to bring over expats from non-EU member countries. According to relocation firms, the highest costs involved by relocating an expat are housing costs (from EUR2,000/month to EUR7,000/month), children’s tuition (up to EUR20,000 a year) and salary-related tax payments.