Ionuţ Dumitru, chief economist, Raiffeisen Bank: If we look at the European scale, the change in the weight of the manufacturing industry in the EU states between 2015 and 2025, we will see that Romania had the biggest contraction, a 10 percentage point contraction of the weight of the manufacturing industry, compared to Poland, the Czech Republic or Hungary.♦ No buyers at the first auction for the sale of the assets of the Damen Mangalia shipyard, at the market price of 184 million euros ♦ The failure of the first auction for the sale of the Damen Mangalia shipyard, after the two failed auctions at the Liberty Galati complex, raises a question mark on the industry’s ability to find investors to save the assets ♦ There is a widespread industrial decline and the problem is not isolated to one sector ♦ Value industries added small, with energy costs more important in total costs, have suffered the most in recent years.The lack of a buyer at the first auction for the sale of the assets of the Damen Mangalia shipyard, at the market price of 184 million euros, prolongs the uncertainty of the future of more than 1,000 employees and of the assets that are at risk of deteriorating due to lack of activity. Romania is looking for investors for two industrial giants that have reached critical situations, at a time when Europe is talking about reindustrialization, strategic autonomy and consolidation production capacities. While other European states financially support strategic industries and try to bring back production within the European Union, Romania risks being left without important pillars of industry. You might also be interested: The situation of the two companies is not an isolated case, but reflects a broader trend that has been manifesting for almost a decade. Beyond the specific difficulties of some industrial players, economists warn that Romania is gradually losing the industrial base that supported exports, productivity and economic convergence. Ionuţ Dumitru, Chief Economist at Raiffeisen Bank, said that the growth model of the Romanian economy focuses on the budget deficit, consumption and investments, a model that is beginning to creak, and one of the less visible phenomena, which has begun to raise serious question marks regarding long-term development prospects, is the accelerated loss of the industrial base. Ionuţ Dumitru explained at the annual AAFBR conference that in the last decade, Romania recorded the largest reduction in the share of the manufacturing industry in the economy among the Central and Eastern European states, surpassing Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary in terms of the rate of deindustrialization.
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