The component segment made up the largest share of the market, EUR7.6 billion last year, while automobile production generated turnover of EUR3.5 billion, said ACAROM president Constantin Stroe.
Although demand for cars and components in Europe will continue to decline for at least three years, Romanian carmaking is far from saturation. On the other hand, European strategies and programs do not offer concrete support to making the local builders in new member states more competitive, Stroe said.
To become globally competitive, the local car component sector must overcome barriers like the lack of technology and innovation, poor infrastructure, rising raw material prices, lack of capital, difficult access to supplier loans and weak market.
ACAROM officials said innovation in the auto industry has come almost exclusively in the last decades from imports of technology, because there are no tax benefits for research, like in other states. In addition, new technologies are insufficiently integrated by the local technical possibilities and patent legislation is not stimulative.