The Foreign Investors Summit, the 3-day exclusive event organized by Business Review magazine, continues with the second day, in which we will analyse the main industries that have attracted strong investments in the past year. After the first day, in which representatives of the government and of the private sector have talked about the country’s strategy and the new avenues to attract investments, on Wednesday the panelists will focus on the IT&C, R&D, Energy and Automotive industries.
Industry Zoom: IT&C
Teodor Blidarus – President, ANIS:
The members of the association employ 25 percent of all the people in this industry, said Blidarus, about ANIS. We estimate the turnover of the IT market at EUR 3.6 billion this industry and will exceed EUR 4 billion in 2017. There are 90,000 people employed in this industry.
Around 5,000-6,000 graduates each year in the IT sector, while the demand is of 10,000 to 12,000 people.
Bogdan Pelinescu – Country Manager, Luxoft
We are optimistic about the growth of the IT sector, it is a field that will contribute to future growth. We must highlight the strengths: we have very well qualified people, we have a tradition in IT training. Our future colleagues receive a strong math and informatics education and are obtaining good results at international competitions. We believe that a partnership with the education sector is important and we want to develop it.
Claudiu Petre – Structural Funds and business development projects manager, Telekom Romania
The outsourcing industry in Romania employs around 63 000 people and is worth RON 1.2 billion. Currently, the growth rate in the Romanian outsourcing industry stands at 20 percent.
Radu Puchiu – Secretary of State, GovItHub
There is a gap between the potential of the sector and the public administration, which is lagging behind.
Ion Sturza – President, Fribourg Capital
We must be aware that we are talking about a myth in the making. The pool of people we have is too small to create a Romanian Silicon Valley. What we need is a big density of talents, and the keyword here is multiculturalism. Romania must be open to attract talents from all over the world. I In order to have a Facebook or a Google in Romania, we must have multiculturalism.
Claudiu Petre – Structural Funds and business development projects manager, Telekom Romania
In 2016 the investment in broadband stood at EUR 180 million. BPO in Telekom is a business worth a few million euros. For the past three years, Telekom Austria has been served by our Romanian team. The team includes 220 staff based in Brasov.
Bogdan Pelinescu – Country Manager, Luxoft
We are investing in training. In Bucharest we have two teams working exclusively in R&D. The first is involved in automated testing and the second one is active in cloud technology. Alongside, we have opened ourselves towards the outside world by offering courses for the general public. We no longer talk about outsourcing, we get access to the latest technologies in order to add more value to services and we implement products.
Radu Puchiu – Secretary of State, GovItHub
I understand that the question is: will GovItHub survive? Is there life after the elections? The project is the result of a simple observation. This is a pilot project that can serve as an example and it is part of a wide-ranging framework where we think of the IT services of the administration. We thought we must ask the industry for solutions instead of providing them with a set of tasks, as it was done before.
The Government started a discussion and it is important that we are no longer talking about the classic paradigm. The fact that such a discussion opportunity exists is a great opportunity that triggered an outstanding reaction. The reaction baffled us, so many specialists in the IT sector said ‘let’s work together.’
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