BNR's Isarescu: Some send money home to Romania to start new businesses

The analysis of the remittances sent by Romanians abroad shows that some sent money home to start business, and this is a good thing, Governor of the National Bank of Romania Mugur Isarescu told the conference "Migration and entrepreneurship - a significant value." 

"Starting from this statistical data, the money transfer unit which Mr. Dan Lufkin established years ago and led by a few Romanian entrepreneurs made a simple observation. But you that simple observations are at the basis of great discoveries. It saw that this money flow, the information contained in the money flow contain at least the seeds of other information, other essential information. An example, I will not go into any details: which is the geographical repartition. You can infer from the geographical repartition of the money sent from abroad to Romania which is the reverse flow. Where most Romanians left from abroad. You further realise, if you look carefully at the figures, what remittances are made of. That is they initially were intended for helping families in Romania. In time, it was found out by carefully considering these policies that people wanted to make small investments. Small investments meaning houses, out of local patriotism, out of general patriotism, out of need, aspiration. The aspiration of some day returning to the country. Then by looking even more carefully at these figures you notice that some sent money so as to start small businesses in Romania. This is a very good thing. Those are real investments, productive investments," Mugur Isarescu said. 

According to the data presented during the conference, Romanians' policies abroad were worth 3.792 billion euro in 2017, as compared to 3.153 billion in 2016. In the first three months of the year, they amounted to 720 million euro. 

The Governor also said that part of the migrants left villages, communes and probably want, they or their relatives, to start businesses in agriculture. This would have an extraordinarily positive impact on Romania for at least two reasons. The first is that Romania's agricultural potential is highly undervalued and secondly that alongside big investments, just as important, maybe even better would be small investments that would stabilise the workforce and would bring about entrepreneurial units capable of capitalising on local resources.