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).