Foreign Direct Investments In The Romanian Economy In A Regional Context

Foreign direct investments represent the most important and stable source of external financing of all states of the world, irrespective of their level of development. In Romania’s path from the elimination of the centralized economy and up to nowadays, foreign direct investments were also a source of economic growth, a financing source, and a means of acceleration in the process of transition, a contributor to the capitalization of the wealth of the country but also a real barometer of the economic situation. The aim of this article is to analyse the foreign direct investment flows in the Romanian economy after 1990 according to the 3 stages of qualitative evolution of the Romanian market economy : the period of transition to the market economy (1990-2003), the period of the market economy, of pre-accession to the Union (2004-2006), the period of the first 4 years of membership in the European Union (2006-2010), the main focus of the research being on outlining the place of the national economy in the South Eastern European region, as well as in the European Union. In 20 years of activity to attract international investments, foreign direct investments have covered on average current account deficit of about 60%. In the last two decades, Romania was the leader of the South East European region (7 countries), the investors were directing to our country more than 33% of their investments. The best results achieved by Romania in FDI were recorded in 2003-2006 when total investment flows accounted for about 8% of GDP.