ANIS Romania: Political passion does not take the place of economic vision

Author: Corina Vasile, Executive Director, ANIS: Innovation is the only valid model of economic growth

Poland, 41st place, up 11 places. Romania, 61st place, down 12 places. In a single year, in the World Competitiveness Yearbook 2026 report, published last weekby the prestigious IMD Lausane – World Competitiveness Center business school.

Because whateveryou are passionate about the current political disputes, what matters at the endof the day is whether Rome remains competitive or not.

Whether it will be, in the foreseeable future, a more prosperous place, where entrepreneurs have the confidence to invest and where people want to live and work, or not. Why are such analyses more relevant than the simple comparison of GDP or GDP/capita or GDP growth in the last year? First of all, because it encompasses trust (or lack of) in institutions – the perception of top executives is embedded in about a third of the metrics used for analysis, in addition to two-thirds hard data. And this is a predictive indicator for private investments. Secondly, equally important, is that it evaluates the relative performance of countries on four groups of metrics, because it is useless for us to do well (and we don’t) if those around us are rockets.

The picture by sub-categories is severe: Romania has fallen in all metrics: 62nd place for economic performance (compared to 56 in 2025), 61st for government efficiency (compared to 44), 69th for business efficiency (compared to 50) and 55th for infrastructure (compared to 45). There were also decreases in basic infrastructure (-18 places), technological infrastructure (-20 places), scientific infrastructure (-8 places) and education (-6 places). The most alarming figure: -20 places for technological infrastructure in a single year. To understand how other countries have progressed compared to us.

The IMD recommendations for Romania, extracted from the country profile: higher efficiency of public spending to reduce the budget deficit; acceleration of investments in areas of smart specialization, research, development and innovation; support for companies in implementing digital transformation; improvement of health and education systems; and modernization of the national defense industry.

Let’s stop at accelerating investments in areas of smart specialisation, research, development and innovation. It is a logical recommendation, essentially what it says is that if you have little money

(budget deficit), you invest it where you have a higher multiplication factor in the reasonable term and it keeps you competitive, corroborated with the next recommendation (improving health and education systems). It also gives a direction of transition towards an economic model with higher added value. These four summary recommendations contain more economic vision than the last 3 government programs published in the last year (Bolojan, Tomac, Veștea).

None of the three programs proposes an endogenous growth model — that is, one based on productivity, innovation and human capital as the main drivers. All three treat economic growth either as a result of fiscal stabilization or as an effect of public investment in infrastructure (more or less from European funds). The private sector appears mainly as a source of tax revenue, not as a protagonist of a development model.

The document proposed by Tomac identifies the link between institutional reform and debureaucratization and attracting private investments. But even there is a lack of an explicit theory about how Romania is moving from a low-cost economy to a value-added economy.

Digital transformation occurs at the operational level, not as a strategic step, or as a source of efficiency and growth. More or less connected to the “what is required” from Brussels (e-wallet, cloud, etc.), digitalization is slipped punctually by domains/ministries, with some improvements in the governance of digitalization in the Tomac program. Punctually, we have digitized ourselves sofar, and we have not advanced in any top, including the official ones of the European Union.

How do you see things from the private sector? We have an economic stagnation (it matters less if it is even a technical recession) doubled by prolonged high inflation = stagflation. That’s a bad combination by all standards. Romania has stagflation with three overlapping layers — external (energy), administrative (fiscal adjustment) and structural (low productivity) — and the tools available are all partial: high interest rates do not solve supply, austerity does not solve productivity, and industrial policy is absent as a coherent vision.

What do we propose? Innovation and digital transformation as a driver of economic growth. Coherent public policies focused on stimulating innovation, smart specialization investments in absolutely all areas (exactly what IMD Lausanne says). We did a study on the economic impact for Romania if the IT industry would reach the size (turnover) of that of the Czech Republic (scenario 1) or Poland (scenario 2) through the accelerated growth of the innovative component. Why did we take IT as a reference industry? Because it has a multiplier effect proven in the last decade – it contributes directly with 6-8% to GDP and in total (direct plus indirect plus induced) with over 14%, with about 200,000 employed specialists, the total impact is about 900,000 jobs (about 15% of the number of jobs in the economy), it is the sector with the largest contribution to the state/employee budget and the first contributor to the net export of services. Therefore, it is already a sector with high gross value added and with the highest hourly productivity in the economy. By all criteria, an already performing sector.

What would it mean to reach the level of the Czech Republic? An increase of 6 billion euros to the GDP, an increase of 45,000 jobs in the economy, an increase in tax revenues of 13 billion euros. What would it mean to target Poland’s level (a much more ambitious goal) – plus 40 billion euros to GDP, an increase of almost 295,000 jobs in the economy. But, what do we have to do to get there? A coherent package of public policies, because innovation does not arise spontaneously (Paul Romer won the Nobel Prize for Economics demonstrating this), an industrial and export policy

centered on digital transformation and innovation (we don’t have any) and, of course, a basis for fiscal predictability and better tax revenue collection. And a set of proven tools in the countries that have advanced rapidly in the digital economy – Estonia, the Czech Republic, Poland. All are detailed here https://anis.ro/anis-innovation-ai/.

Regardless of the political formula voted by the Parliament for the new Government, the priority would be to regain Romania’s economic competitiveness and transition to a new model of economic growth, based on stimulating innovation.

About ANIS The Employers’ Association of the Software and Services Industry (ANIS) is the representative association of the IT industry in Romania. ANIS has over 150 member companies, is a promoter of digitalization and has been representing the interests of the IT industry for 25 years, being a credible dialogue partner that can contribute to the creation of public policies that facilitate the capitalization of technology for socio-economic development.