American Chamber of Commerce in Romania

Bucharest, February 19, 2010: The American Chamber of Commerce in Romania (AmCham Romania) promotes the improvement of the legislative and implementation framework for public-private-partnerships (PPP).

We welcome the government’s initiative to raise the PPP policy to the unit level and to put together a committee made up of representatives of more ministries in order to extend the PPP as a solution for attracting investments.

In response to this initiative and in the context of AmCham’s constant efforts for improving Romania’s attractiveness for foreign investments, AmCham has advanced to the responsible authorities its members recommendations for developing the implementation framework for attracting major investments and developing infrastructure projects.

The recommendations were elaborated within a dedicated PPP working group, based on AmCham members’ expertise accumulated in the locally, regionally and internationally, in February and taking into account best practices in other EU member states, especially UK which has a long tradition in developing PPP projects. These aim the need to improve the existing framework, at the level of primary, secondary and tertiary legislation, correlated with the increase of transparency, professionalism and relevant experience of the contracting authorities. At the same time, authorities were provided with concrete and pragmatic procedural and institutional recommendations for improving the PPP implementation framework. The revision of the applicant’s guide as essential PPP tool, as well as establishing clear procedural norms, will represent an adequate context for successfully implementing such projects, which will significantly contribute to Romania’s social-economic development.

In AmCham’s opinion, the current implementation framework fails to motivate and attract major investments through PPP projects. On the medium and long term, this situation will eventually affect the development of the public sector, which will not succeed in taking from the private sector the necessary managerial experience in order to efficiently and coherently administrate public resources.

AmCham’s proposal is the elaboration of an unitary policy to be adopted at the level of all involved ministries for stimulating PPP projects in sectors such as healthcare, road and social infrastructure, and education.

AmCham Romania expresses its support and availability to participate in the future consultations to be organized by the Governement on PPP and to meet private sector and government representatives on this matter.


About the American Chamber of Commerce in Romania

The American Chamber of Commerce in Romania (AmCham Romania) is a non-political, not for profit organization founded in 1993 by U.S. investors. Currently, AmCham Romania has 300 members – U.S., International and local companies, representing investments above 10 billion USD, and more than 150.000 created jobs. AmCham Romania is affiliated to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a member of the European Council of American Chambers of Commerce.
AmCham Romania is firmly engaged in assisting its members in identifying the issues that the business community faces and in promoting the solutions recommended by our members to the Romanian authorities. AmCham Romania members are invited to actively contribute with their experize in areas such as taxation, competition, state-aid and single market access, energy, environment, education, labor market, healthcare, ICT, public procurement, within specific working groups. (www.amcham.ro