The University of Bucharest, the Romanian Academy and KPMG Romania, project regarding the impact of Romania’s socioeconomic challenges until 2030

The University of Bucharest, in partnership with the Romanian Academy and KPMG Romania, has launched a project which analyses the impact of socioeconomic challenges that Romania will face until 2030. The project was launched during the conference “Financial mediation and new monetary instruments: the pivot of the great transformation of Romania’s economy in the 2030 horizon”, which was organized Friday, the 24^th of October 2023 and was transmitted live on the online platforms of “Ziarul Financiar”.

The project is designed to be a model of constructive relationship between the academic and private settings and its main objective is to inform the Romanian public, including decisive political agents, about the impact that the fourth wave of structural changes of Romanian economy has on the research, development and innovation sector, on the financial-banking sector and the energy sector. Thus, in the context of the massive changes that have reformed contemporary Romanian economy, but also of the global impact of technological revolution, the fourth wave marks the necessity to adapt to a new socioeconomic structure, and the manner in which the sector transformations will be managed will have a major importance in what concerns the future of Romania in the next decades.

Among the personalities who attended the launching of the project we mention professor Marian Preda, PhD, Rector of the University of Bucharest, professor Mircea Dumitru, PhD, teaching staff at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Bucharest and Vice-president of the Romanian Academy, and professor Dragoș Aligică, PhD, teaching staff at the Faculty of Business and Administration of the University of Bucharest. Also present at the conference were representatives of the business environment in Romania: Ramona Jurubiță, Country Managing Partner KPMG Romania, Cristian Sporis, Vice-president of Raiffeisen Bank Romania, Lucian Croitoru, Senior Advisor to the governor of the Central Bank of Romania on monetary policy, Mihaela Bîtu, CEO ING Bank Romania and Omer Tetik, CEO Banca Transilvania. The event was moderated by Angela Manolache, Coordinating partner for Financial Services KPMG Romania and Sorin Pîslaru, chief editor of “Ziarul Financiar”.

 “We are discussing about the future in the financial area, in technology; it is a digitalized, technologized world but, as long as in Romania we will have the well-known disparities, with 125% of the average GPD of the European Union at parity with the purchasing power in Bucharest-Ilfov and with 40% in north-east Romania, as long as we will have all four waves present simultaneously, co-existing, in our overlapping Romania, we will have to approach the others. According to statistics, only 25% of Romanians are now using internet banking, which means there are another 75% who are in the other waves, who go to the ATM with their credit card or don’t own a credit card and receive money in cash. This diversity will have to be managed in a society of the future, and the University of Bucharest offers a large range of specialists who can discuss about risks, demographic problems, psychological ones, about all that refers to behaviour which influences economy, about values, about the dialogue between generations, between cultures, between professions, about all these things that pertain to modern education, diversity, and all will find their place in an economy, in a society of the future.”, underlined professor Marian Preda, PhD, Rector of the University of Bucharest, during the opening of the event.

In the last 200 years, Romanian economy has known three waves of structural changes. The first wave started mid-19th century, when, following the Industrial Revolution, the entire Romanian society was modernised. The second wave was initiated after the Second World War, when, with the adopting of the communist system, Romanian economy was planned in a centralised manner, most production systems (including all large and medium enterprises) being owned by the state. The third wave started after 1989, when, along with the abolition of the communist system, a series of structural changes which targeted the transition to a market economy and integrating to the European model took place.