The largest portion of environmental spending was allocated to air pollution control (41 percent), followed by water and wastewater projects (32 percent) and waste management-related activities (20 percent). The remaining 7 percent was spent on other projects, primarily the national monitoring system.
The environmental business sector in Romania is small and young. It is estimated that fewer than 200 business provide environmental services and technologies (122 were included in this survey), and 69 percent of the companies were established after 1990. More than two-thirds of the companies were privately owned, although a significant share (22 percent) were state owned. The remaining companies were either in the process of privatization or under some combination of state and private ownership.
With 11 percent of environmental businesses involved in joint-ventures with foreign firms, Romania has the second lowest occurrence of foreign partnerships of the surveyed countries. Partners for Romanian joint-ventures come mainly from Germany, France and the United States.
Total annual environmental revenues from the 82 companies that provided financial data exceeded USD 38 million in 1995. Half the income was generated from technical services, followed by the sale of environmental technologies (26 percent) and testing and monitoring activities (10 percent). The other 14 percent of total revenues came from research, training and education.
When the total revenues are broken down by media, the largest share was generated from water and wastewater activities (46 percent), followed by waste-related activities (19 percent), air pollution control (13 percent) and energy-related activities (12 percent). The remainder was generated by other activities, including industrial safety and noise reduction, environmental impact assessment and soil and land activities.
As in the other surveyed countries, no effective formal channels exist to provide information on project opportunities. Personal and professional contacts, direct mail, the daily press, environmental publications, the Ministry of Environment, local authorities and fairs and trade shows are among the primary sources for information about business opportunities. Professional associations, such as the chamber of commerce, and the Academy of Sciences are not seen as major information sources or as effective lobbying groups for the environmental business sector.
Romania's environmental professionals showed high interest in information regarding domestic environmental regulations, finding domestic partners, new environmental technologies, domestic tenders for projects, domestic environmental problems, and environmental quality standards for industries.
More than half of the respondents showed high interest in an environmental business directory and a regular newsletter containing updated information on project opportunities, technologies and financing. Half the respondents would be willing to pay for such information products. Other information delivery options in high demand included a broadcast fax service and an information research service providing specific environmental information.
Professional environmental training was requested particularly on environmental impact assessment, environmental economics, environmental auditing, environmental regulation and policy and environmental management.
There was no indication of a major institution that provides widespread support or assistance to environmental companies in Romania. Business and industrial associations and professional training institutions were the most commonly named sources of assistance, but they were only mentioned by 31 percent and 30 percent of respondents, respectively.
Legal regulations and registration requirements were seen as the largest barrier to business development in Romania and were mentioned by 70 percent of survey respondents. Other barriers mentioned by more than half of the survey respondents were access to credit and finance, general access to information, and low market demand for environmental products and services.