“Romania should not rely in the long run on the fact that it still has a cheap workforce. Romania should plan to manufacture and sell products with high added value in order to stay competitive,” Roland Berger told ZF in an interview.
“Nokia’s departure reinforces the notion that the Romanian economy needs to grow through innovation, technology and productivity. There will always be a cheaper place to manufacture in the world: today it’s Vietnam, tomorrow it can be an African country,” he also said.
Berger, 73, founded his consultancy firm 44 years ago and was advisor to former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
Had Romania been a competitive enough market for Nokia to start to manufacture smartphones in Jucu, perhaps it would not have lost the Finnish investment to Asian countries.
If the purpose of the Romanian government is to increase people’s living standards, it should not base its economic and tax policies on attracting foreign investors who pursue a low-cost business model, Roland Berger says.
He believes once Romania will invest in increasing the quality of products it delivers, workforce costs will also increase, but so will employee productivity.
Roland Berger was in Romania once before, in 2006, when he was the special guest of the ZF Gala, in the year when the “Top 100 most valuable companies in Romania” yearbook was launched.
(English version by Daniela Stoican)