Google maps street view for Romania (including Iasi) and CEE

Well, it's not actually Google maps.

It is a similar service that it's in Beta version - Norc.

It also has versions for: Austria, Czeach Republic, Poland, Slovakia.

It is still pretty slow and not very easy to use but I think that it's still much much better than nothing.

So you should try it: www.norc.ro

Foreigners in Romania

I just got an e-mail with an announcement from Romanian Immigration Office. It contains some data about the foreigners living in Romania.

There are only 64789 registered foreigners living in Romania.

Out of them, only 17619 are from EU countries, and 47170 are from non-EU countries.

Out of the EU citizens living in Romania 4366 are Italian, 3268 German and 2298 French.

Most of the foreigners living in Romania are from Moldova (13820), Turkey (8011) and China (5545).

The highest number of foreigners is found in Bucharest, Iasi, Cluj, Timis and Ilfov counties.

The most common purpose of their residence in Romania is because they are married to Romanian citizens (13086 cases) and because they are studying in Romania (12820 cases).

Out of this data it seems that still Romania is not a very attractive destination for foreign people.  65.000 is a very small number compared to the population of Romania. I am sure that the Baltic countries have more foreigners living there even if their population is 10 times smaller than Romania.

And the main reason to worry, as I see it, is that people that come to Romania to study do not continue to work in Romania. This is a very big loss. After investing time and money in their education, Romania should to everything possible to keep the best graduates. But after all, there are Romanians that leave the country after graduation, so why should be different for the foreigners who study here?

Direct Flights Budapest - Iasi

Hungarian airlines Malev will launch scheduled flights from Budapest to Iasi starting in March 2009.

I found the news on a Hngarian website.

I think that this is a very good news as it offers the opportunity to people from the NE region of Romania to travel almost everywhere in the world with connection in Budapest. The added value is that the Ferihegy airport from Budapest is better connected to important global destinations than Otopeni airport. And besides this, most of the flights from Budapest are cheaper than the ones from Bucharest. These are facts that are well known for years by the people living in western part of Romania.

Of course Malev is the second international airline that operates from Iasi airport, after Austrian airlines. And of course we have the Tarom flights.

I am looking forward for the moment when either Ryanair or EasyJet (second option would be Wizzair, Blueair, SkyEurope)  will also decide to operate flights from Iasi.

Monica Macovei - EU Woman of the Year 2008

Former minister of Justice in Romania, Monica Macovei, is the EU Woman of the Year 2008.  

She currently works for the UK government as a consultant on justice reforms in EU candidate countries. But it was her efforts in rooting out political corruption in Romania which won her the plaudits of an international jury. She was widely credited with implementing justice reforms that allowed Romania to enter the European Union (EU) on January 1, 2007.  

Presenting her with the award, a gold broche, Pottering, EU Parliament´s President, said she and the other candidates were a "symbol and model for women everywhere" and that she could be proud of her achievements.  

Dedicating the prize to "all Romanians who believe in the rule of law", she said, "Tackling corruption has been the most challenging thing in my life but I will continue because I believe in zero corruption."   

Unfortunately I believe that corruption is still an important problem in Romania. And there should be increased efforts to solve the problem of corruption. There is still a lot of corruption both at national (central) level as well as at local (regional) level. 

Iasi - Orizont 2020

Last week I connected on Liknedin with Henk Procé. He was one of the members of the Dutch Consultancy team that developed the Strategic Development Plan for Iasi "Orizont 2020" in 2007.

At the time when this plan was intensely discussed in 2007 I was not aware of it. But now, one year after it was launched, it finally came to my attention.

I took the time to read some articles that were written in the last quarter of 2007 about this project:

Ziarul de Iasi - S-au ales cele 10 proiecte de dezvoltare a Iasului (Romanian)
Newsiasi - Brandul "Iasi, oras al inspiratiei", contestat inca de la aprobare (Romanian)

The opinions in the media were mainly critical, but I think that this had mainly to do with the politic factors. The war between the political parties before the local elections that were organized in 2008.

I also started reading the document. You can find it in English on the website of the City Hall: Iasi Regional Development Strategy 2020.

My personal opinion is that the plan is quite good and the suggested priorities are quite close to what I think that should be done for Iasi.

Unfortunately I didn't find a lot of information about the follow-up on this plan.

After I finish reading the whole document I will share some more information in future posts.

Iasi - is it known in Europe?

I think that Iasi is pretty well known by Romanian-speaking people. Most of the people from Romania and Moldova know Iasi and have a pretty good image about the city. But if one starts asking people from other countries about Iasi, only a few ever heard of Iasi and know something about it.

The main reason for this is that Iasi never had a strategy in promoting itself in other countries. There are some examples of cities from Eastern Europe that are very well known even if they are not the capital-city: Krakow, Brno, Wroklaw, Odessa. Even some cities in Romania, like Cluj-Napoca, Sibiu and Timisoara, are starting to be known in the whole Europe. Each one of them attracts a big number of tourist, are part of large infrastructure projects and are attract important foreign investments.

I think that the first step for being known outside the borders in Romania would be to have available information in English (or other European languages) about Iasi. At the begining of this year most of the websites about Iasi were only in Romanian. Now I see that there are already some important sites that have the English/French versions as well.

I will name only 2 examples now:

1. Iasi City Hall
http://www.primaria-iasi.ro/content.aspx?lang=EN&item=0
Of course, there are still some things that are not in place. For example on the website of the City Hall there are some pages: "Page not yet published in this language", as example the Public Relations page. Or there are pages that are in Romanian even on the Englis version, as example the Contact page

2. Iasi city tourism
http://www.turism-iasi.ro/index.php?id=101
Browsing this site I found out that Iasi is a city that had an important contribution to the feminist movement in Romania. I always knew that part of the charm of the city comes from the women that are there :)
The first surgeon woman in Romania Mara Trancu-Rainer (1875-1950) – was a member of the Romanian Academy of Medicine and honourary member of the Biology Society in Bucharest.
The first lady lawyer in Romania Ella Negruzzi (1876-1948). To her name is connected the manifestation for social-political rights to women and also the fight of the Romanian intellectuals against fascism and war, for freedom and the country’s independence.

New start

After a long period of inactivity I decided to focus again on this project - Strategy for Iasi.

So expect new regular postings starting this week.

I also decided to try to use the new services from Google Friend Connect.

I am still researching about this tool, but if everything works out fine, I could add some social networking features to the site. And this could only be good. 

Make sure you sign in. You can use your Google, Yahoo, AIM or OpenID account.

Thank you!

Cezar

Strategies for improving the labour market in Romania (ideas from Bulgaria)

I'm reading an interesting article in Financial Times - www.FT.com
Bulgaria reopens labour links with Vietnam
I thin the sittuation is quite similar with the one in Romania and we could learn from their strategies.

I will just copy some interesting ideas from the article and try to make a parallel to situation in Romania.

For years Bulgaria has been a source of cheap labour for western Europe. Now the tables have been turned, as it finds itself facing an acute shortage of workers.
“Bulgaria employed Vietnamese workers under communism and they fitted in well. We would offer jobs on contract terms with temporary residence,” said Petar Dimitrov, the economy minister.
Quite similar to Romania, don't you think? I already wrote about the growing number of Asian people working in Romania. But I didn't hear of any initiative from the authorities to make bilateral agreements with some countries to facilitate the import of skilled labour in Romania. And as we now, it is badly needed especially in the construction industry. On the contrary, in Romania the immigration legislation is not helping companies at all.

The decision to seek workers from Asia follows a successful campaign to persuade the 500,000-strong Bulgarian diaspora in Moldova and Ukraine to return home by offering a fast-track process to acquire Bulgarian citizenship [...] Diaspora workers are much in demand because they don’t have a language problem.
Its sad, but it looks like Bulgaria is more successful to attract people from Moldova than we are. Even if most of the people in Moldova speak Romanian and this could be a big advantage. It's obvious that Romania could gain a lot by attracting skilled workers from Moldova. Ukraine could also be a source of skilled people. And, because the salaries are still better in Romania, we might even attract some people from Bulgaria.

This policy is being revised after thousands of the “Bessarabians” left to seek jobs in Spain, Italy and Greece once they received their Bulgarian passports. "What we need to do is introduce a green card arrangement, requiring five years’ work here to qualify for a Bulgarian passport” Mr Dimitrov says.
Our Bulgarian neighbors already have experience with this strategy. They identified an important problem and they are also giving us the solution for it. We just need to modify our immigration legislation accordingly and then start the campaign to attract the Moldavians.

Another measure is to cut 12,000 civil service jobs [...], “to make additional white-collar workers available to the private sector”, says Plamen Oresharski, finance minister.
That's an excellent idea. In Iasi county the pubic sector is by far the biggest employer. And we all know that the Romanian state is not very efficient. People are not very productive in pubic jobs. This is the main reason why the GDP per capita is so low in Iasi. But these people have a good education and reasonable good skills. If they receive some training on the job they could reach high productivity levels in the private sector.

Wind Energy in Iasi

Wind currently produces about 1% of world-wide electricity use. The wind energy is one of the most used renewable energy forms in Europe. It accounts for approximately 19% of electricity production in Denmark, 9% in Spain and Portugal, and 6% in Germany and the Republic of Ireland. Globally, wind power generation increased more than 5 times between 2000 and 2007. So it's obvious that having wind energy in Iasi county could prove to be a very good thing.

Energia e Servizi, an Italian company plans to develop several windmills in Iasi county. The local authorities offered their full support for the project. So far the best region for wind energy in Romania is considered the sea shore in Tulcea county. But there are also other wind energy projects in the North-East region: Suceava, Botosani, Bacau, Neamt, Vaslui.

More details about the plans of windmills in Iasi in BZI (English translation).

Iasi Airport update

The plan to transform the Iasi Airport in a modern international
airport capable of becoming the leading one in the region is one step
closer to becoming reality.

A problem that was stoping the plan to move forward was the fact that
some of the land needed to expand the airport belongs to the Ministery
of Defence.

Finaly the local authorities reached an agreement with the Ministery
of Defence. Acording to this agreement, the local authorities will
receive from the Ministery of Defence the needed land for the
expansion of the airport. In exchange, the Ministery of Defence will
receive other lands in another area.

Let's hope that by next year we'll be able to fly directly to Iasi
from Paris or Amsterdam or London.

250K new business in Iasi

Gabriel Mardarasievici, the CEO of Ness Romania, and Bogdan Pitigoi,
the owner of Tester Group, are 2 of the most important businessmen in
Iasi. They started MP Business Angels earlier this year. After
carefuly analysing 20 business plans, MP Business Angels announced
today that they are going to invest in their first start-up 250.000
Euro.

The owner of the winning business plan is a 20 years old student from
Iasi - Razvan Antohie. The new company will provide outdoor promotion
services through a network of bilboards with LED lamps. Initially the
company will focus on the most important cities in Moldova region from
Romania. After the initial phase the initiators hope to be able to
gaign national coverage.

I'm very courious to find out more technical details about how the
bilboards will be build. I think that they shoul use Philips
technology as it's the most advanced in the world, Philips Lighting
being the market leader and the pioneer of LED lamps.

If the business will involve a sucessful partnership with Philips
maybe in several years we'll see Philips lights on the Palace of
Culture same as on Le Tour Eifel or the Big Ben.

IKEA is a Dutch company

I just found out IKEA is a Dutch company:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA

"INGKA Holding B.V. is the parent company for all IKEA Group companies, including the industrial group Swedwood, which manufactures IKEA furniture, the sales companies that run IKEA stores, as well as purchasing and supply functions, and IKEA of Sweden, which is responsible for the design and development of products in the IKEA range. INGKA Holding BV is wholly owned by Stichting INGKA Foundation, which is a non-profit foundation registered in Leiden in the Netherlands. Inter IKEA Systems B.V. in Delft, also in the Netherlands, owns the IKEA concept and trademark, and there is a franchising agreement with every IKEA store in the world."

I think that most of us think that it's a Swedish company.

This is why it's important to have a smart, friendly and predictable financial system. Important International companies are moving their HQ in countries like Netherlands because of that. Even some important companies that do their business in Romania are headquartered in Netherlands, like Rompetrol for example.

34% of Moldavians are ready to migrate (how many to Iasi?)

One of the reasons why economies in Western Europe are still growing is the contribution of the emigrants. Even if most of the people don't like to admit this, it is the truth. I think that for Iasi this could also be one of the growth engines.

In order to achieve this, the first winning strategy should be keeping as many students as possible in Iasi after they finish the studies.

Another important strategy should be the return of the valuable people that used to live in Iasi and are now in Bucharest or in other countries.

But as important as these 2 strategies could be another one: attract some valuable people from Moldova.

I found out from a poll realized by Gallup, that 34% of Moldavians are ready to migrate in another country. Iasi might not be as attractive as Western Europe if we compare the salaries, but it could compensate this in other ways: same language, smaller living costs compared to Wester Europe, the proximity with the Moldavian border (closer to their families) , the cultural similitudes and so on.

GDP per capita in Iasi

In the year 2007, the Gross Domestic Product per capita in Iasi county was only 3,986 Euro, 1500 Euro less than the national average - 5486 Euro.

Even though in recent years, the value of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) recorded a significant increase, from 2,500 Euro in 2005 to nearly 4,000 at the end of 2007, Iasi county is still far away from Bucharest and the counties in the Western part of Romania.

On the other hand I think that it's also important to notice that the GDP per capita in Iasi is still 5 times bigger than the average GDP per capita in Moldova (less than 800 Euro).

There is a strong connection between GDP per capita and average income. This means that the incomes in Iasi would be several times higher than in Moldova. Still I don't see to many companies taking advantage of this and bringing in Moldavian employees.

The proximity with the Moldavian border, the cultural similitudes and the fact that there are already a lot of Moldavian students in Iasi could help Iasi become an attractive destination to emigrants from Moldova. This would contribute to the economical growth of the region.

The access to qualified and relatively cheap labor market from Moldova could become a key selling point when trying to attract important investors. But before being able to sell this as a benefit to the investors, this system needs to be pioneered by some local entrepreneurs and they need to prove that it could be economical efficient and it can bring important profits.

The most expensive newspaper copy

The most expensive newspaper in the world, "Zimbrulu and Vulturulu", was printed in Iasi in 1858. These days it is exposed in the World Philatelic Exhibition EFIRO 2008, at Romexpo. The newspaper with a value of over 830 thousand Euro is back in Romania after more than 2 years in London, in a British collection, and dozens of other years in a bank in Switzerland.

It has become the most valuable copy of a newspaper and the most precious philatelic piece (it is also a collection of postal marks) from a random happening as the Romanian Post representatives said. The famous copy was sent in November 1858 with destination Galati. Because the package was weighting very much, on the copy were applied 8 postal marks Bull Head (Cap de Bour), one of the most rare and appreciated stamp. This is the most famous set of stamps and postal marks applied on a correspondence. At Galati it was sold to a bookseller and collector of stamps.

At the last auction, held in Geneva, the piece had a starting price of 500.000 Euro and was sold for 700.000 Euro. With fees and commissions involved, the final price reached 830.000 Euros. The amount made "Zimbrulu and Vulturulu" the most expensive newspaper copy in the world. At Romexpo the exhibition is organized by the National Romanian Post Office, in collaboration with Romanian Philatelic Federation. The newspaper can be admired in Bucharest between June 20-27.