The corruption in the country “scares the investitures”

According to the president of the Romanian-British Chamber of Commerce, Raymond Breden, the companies complain they do not manage to gain public contracts considering the competitors “act dishonestly”.

According to statistics, in 2011, the foreign investments decreased with a lot more than a third compared to the precedent year.

The president of the Romania-British Chamber of Commerce, Raymond Breden, considers that bureaucracy and corruption in the country are responsible for this.

“The first thing that they encounter is bureaucracy and after they stagnate longer they start to encounter corruption”, explained Raymond Breden, in an interview accorded to the correspondent of Romania Radio at London, Dan Vasiliu.

The companies complain that they don’t manage to gain public contracts because of the fact that the competitors “act dishonestly”.

According to Raymond Breden, the firms complain that “they receive subtle clues that if they bribe, things will get solved.”

The president of Romania-British Chamber of Commerce stated that however he doesn’t have proves that the British firms comply with these practices.

“All companies that I have worked with have complained aloud and for a long time that they were requested to bribe, but I don’t have proves that they did it”, admitted the British official.
According to him, it is lethal to Romanian entrepreneurship the fact that the public clerk can pay from their pocket if they made mistakes which lead to a loss of public money.

“This concept determines nobody to want to sign anything, because if they made somehow a mistake, this one will be discovered to a future audit and they will become responsible”, explained Raymond Breden.

The investitures are not afraid of taxes

Raymond Breden considers that the fiscal system from Romania doesn’t represent an obstacle for foreign investitures.

According to him, the VAT is perfectly in harmony with the EU system, and the tax system for corporations is similarly with the British system.

“In the last 10 years, I haven’t encounter any investiture who would tell me that he didn’t invest in Romania because of the tax level”, declared Raymond Breden.

He added that, compared to Great Britain, in Romania exist some advantages. In his opinion, though not justified, there are many fiscal controls during a year.

“The standard of controls is, generally, an incompetent one”, declared Raymond Breden.
According to him, the fiscal inspectors’ behavior is not professional in some cases, thereby existing situations where the companies are intimidated.

Translated by
Alexandra-Diana Mircea
MTTLC, Bucharest University