AmCham Romania welcomes Romania’s upgrade to emerging market status by FTSE Russell, the global index provider, on the occasion of 2019 FTSE Annual Country Classification Review, released on September 26.

The local capital market upgrade from frontier to emerging market has represented for many years not a strategic objective for Romania and has benefited from a broad support from the business community and relevant authorities alike.

 “For members of an organization like AmCham Romania that promotes investments as a strategic pillar for sustainable economic growth, this is excellent news, while for Romania it is the growth opportunity that investors have eagerly expected. A functional capital market is critical for connecting a national economy to the global economy amidst a fierce and increasingly complex competition worldwide for financing, and it was an ingredient that was missing from Romania’s investment offer” stated Ionuț Simion, AmCham Romania President.

Romania’s upgrade to the emerging market status, after a three-year monitoring period sends a positive signal to investors and confirms the growth of the local capital market that AmCham Romania actively contributed to as part of the joint efforts to increase the quality of relevant infrastructure and legislative framework.

”It is a historic moment for Romania’s capital markets and a major win for Romania’s image and credibility. I take this opportunity to thank AmCham Romania members for their persevereacnce in pursuing this shared objective. On AmCham’s behalf, I would like to congratulate the Bucharest Stock Exchange for their consistent efforts all along this process, and to also thank public stakeholder, decision –makers and supervising authorities for undestanding the importance of this objectives and the role of capital markets for financing businesses,  and for being open to the recommendations we have advanced during the consultations. It is proof that sharing the some objective and the burden for their achievement, along with a constructure public-private dialogues is the way to make things happen and brings forth long-term benefits for the economy and for the society. Going forward, this upgrade compells us to continue the capital market development process in order to meet the performance indicators required for the next level, the primary emerging market status, which is the next milestone towards the final goal of qualification for the developed market category. Such aspiration will however need a national politic consensus to complement the joint efforts of the public and private stakeholders that enabled the success we are celebrating today” said Cristian Agalopol, member of the AmCham Romania Board of Directors and co-chair of the AmCham Capital Markets & Financial Services Committee.

FTSE Russel performs an annual review of the countries’ classification in the four categories – developed markets, advanced emerging, secondary emerging and frontier, by analysing 21 criteria that are related to the regulative framework, custody and settlement, dealing landscape, derivatives.. More details about the FTSE classification process are available on their official page here.***