Babe-Bolyai University Faculty of Economics and Business Administration Master Saint George

Regional development policy in Romania

Directive: Dr. elemen Ant!nia

2013

Student: Mi"ola# $odica-Andrea

The development potential of Romania is very good. The plainfact that there are between two and three million Romanians working and studying abroad is a positive sign. Many see

migration as a bad thing but a high degree of mobility is a good thing. !n the one hand a high degree of mobility indicates that people in Romania have the education and skills that allow them to find "obs in developed economies. !n the other hand the e#perience and skills ac$uired by Romanians abroad will be important for the future development prospects of the country. %evelopment is inherently uneven & don't get scared by the unevenness try to embrace it. %evelopment re$uires a shift of resources (people ideas capital) to areas where they can be more productive. These are usually areas with greater economic mass. *n fact almost every country in the +, has a higher level of economic concentration than Romania. *f you hope to be as developed as the rest of the +, is you should welcome concentration not fight it. !ver time as Romania will become more developed regional differences in welfare will even out & the same way it has happened in more developed countries. %evelopment is about people not about regions or cities. Romania's development strategies should not focus on regions or cities but on its people. -hatever you do some regions will develop faster than others. This means that some regions will lose people (usually the lagging regions) while other will gain people (usually the leading regions). *f your goal is to promote balanced regional growth you will almost certainly fail. *f however you aim to offer as many people as possible access to opportunities.by providing essential institutions (especially public security education and health care)and good infrastructure you will create right conditions for healthy and rapid development and with a more efficient use of limited public resources. Romania has a very important advantage over other developing countries & it is close to the place with the highest economic mass in the -orld/ -estern +urope. *t should take full advantage of this and try to build on it through further and deeper integration in +urope. This will re$uire not only investments in strategic infrastructure (highway connections are critical in this respect) but also a focus on encouraging the movement of people within this space. The type of investments it has done in the past but allocate those in a more strategic way/ *nvestments in institutions (e.g. schools health care centers public services infrastructure & water sewage gas etc.) everywhere. 0onnective infrastructure with priority for leading areas (particularly infrastructure that connects people to the growth poles) and for lagging areas with high population density (such as the 1orth2+ast).Targeted measures for marginali3ed groups whose access to opportunities is affected by e#ternal factors (e.g. ethnic discrimination).