Ömer Tetik, CEO of Banca Transilvania, took part in the conference Romania Government Roundtable: South-East Europe's Next Leap Forward – Day III, on the panel dedicated to the European financial landscape.

The event, part of the Economist Impact series, focused on the resilience of Romania’s financial sector and strengthening national prosperity. We’re sharing the main ideas here as well, on the BT Blog.

I believe we can still talk about new lending, new investment, new projects. Even with all the challenges around us, there is still room to invest. And although my name doesn’t betray it, I am Romanian, and I admit that lately I’ve been repeating the same thing almost obsessively:

I’m tired of hearing us complain about what hasn’t gone well and why we haven’t succeeded over the last, I don’t know, 30–35 years. I’d like our speeches and public conversations to focus more on what can go right.

The key question is: what can we do? Because if we look objectively, despite all the difficulties, Romania is on the verge of becoming energy independent. It is a leader in grain and corn production, with growth of almost 30% this year. In Europe, Romania has access to water resources, a rare and extremely valuable advantage.


All of these are strategic and geopolitical advantages, especially from a logistics and transport perspective, when—hopefully soon—the reconstruction of Ukraine begins. You can’t “skip” Romania like in a game of Monopoly. You have to go through Romania and use the resources and companies here. And that should prompt us to change how we talk to foreign investors.

We complain that they come, that they buy assets, that they invest. Then we say “the foreigners are leaving.” Meanwhile, Romanian companies and entrepreneurs are investing abroad as well. Today we have three Romanian car models in the top 10 best-selling cars in Europe. We have plenty of reasons to be proud—not in a self-satisfied way, but in the sense of confidence in our own potential and the ability to promote it.

At times, we risk criticizing ourselves so much that we end up convincing investors to believe the same negative narrative about us. Meanwhile, entrepreneurs are investing and the private sector is growing, even in tough conditions.

We know full well there is no magic pill: the fiscal deficits and high inflation built up over decades can’t be fixed overnight. But open the newspapers or news sites and you’ll notice something interesting: the private sector isn’t necessarily complaining about taxes; it’s talking about growth plans and new investment. About medium- and long-term plans. About the future.

We’re seeing clear signals that the government, working with the private sector, has plans to bring Romania to where it deserves to be. And that’s despite all the shocks we’ve been through: a pandemic, war on the border, an energy crisis—in fact, the second major energy crisis in the last five years.

And yet, Romania has reached almost 80% of the EU average GDP per capita (PPS). Ten to twenty years ago, we couldn’t even dream of that. In the meantime, Romania has overtaken many other economies in the region—EU members or not—in terms of competitiveness.

We are on the cusp of becoming an OECD member. I don’t want to sound naive. We manage other people’s money and work in a business built on risk management. Even so, I genuinely believe Romania has extraordinary potential.

The fact that we are all here shows there is real commitment to Romania and a clear desire to identify the paths through which we can grow. From what we know, and from our investors—local, foreign or multinational—the message is the same: stability, predictability and medium- to long-term plans.

I hope the current setup and the framework outlined, including by Minister Alexandru Nazare, will be consolidated and will demonstrate that Romania can deliver exactly that: stability and predictability, without remaining a country that offers the safety of a developed economy but with extremely high emerging‑market returns.