Chapter 4: Romania

(continued)

4.4 Profile of the Environmental Business Sector

The Romanian environmental business sector comprises almost 200 companies that provide environmental services and technologies. As shown in Table 4.5, most of the companies are quite new - 69 percent were established after 1990, and only 18 percent were established before 1980. Most of the environmental businesses established after 1990 are privately owned. Of the 122 surveyed companies, 68 percent are privately owned and 22 percent are state-owned. Only 4 percent of the companies are state-owned companies in the process of privatization, an indication of the slow development of the privatization process in Romania. The breakdown by ownership is shown in Table 4.6.

TABLE 4.5: AGE OF ENVIRONMENTAL COMPANIES
Year of Establishment	% of Respondents

After 1992	24%
1990-1992	45%
1980-1989	13%
Before 1980	18%

TABLE 4.6: OWNERSHIP STRUCTURE OF ENVIRONMENTAL BUSINESSES
Ownership	% of Respondents

Privately owned	68%
State owned	22%
State and privately owned	6%
In process of privatization	4%

In general surveyed companies are outfitted with all types of modern office equipment. Telephones, personal computers, printers, and fax machines are standard equipment in the firms surveyed. As shown in Table 4.7, almost all of the companies are equipped with phone lines, but only 11 percent said they have an e-mail connection.

TABLE 4.7: OFFICE EQUIPMENT USED
Office Equipment	% of Respondents

Telephone	99%
Personal computer	84%
Printer	83%
Fax	82%
Photocopier	63%
Modem	34%
Telex	29%
Mainframe computer	14%
On-line services connection	14%
E-mail	11%
Cellular phone	10%
GIS computer	4%

Most of the companies in the survey are small enterprises: 42 percent employ fewer than five full-time workers, and 68 percent employ fewer than 20 people full time. Still, as Table 4.8 shows, a significant number of the companies (19 percent) are large and employ more than 50 full-time workers.

TABLE 4.8: EMPLOYEES INVOLVED IN ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVITIES
Number of Employees	Full-time Workers	Part-time/ Contractors

Up to 5	42%	-
6-10	15%	74%
11-20	11%	17%
21-50	13%	4%
More than 50	19%	5%

The total annual environmental revenues reported by the surveyed companies exceeding USD 38 million in 1995, or 30 percent of the estimated market. However, this figure comes from only 82 of the 122 Romanian companies surveyed, as many of the companies did not disclose detailed financial data. The breakdown of companies by amount of revenue in 1995 is shown in Table 4.9.

TABLE 4.9: BREAKDOWN OF COMPANIES BASED ON REVENUES FROM ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVITIES IN 1995
Revenues (USD)	% of Respondents

Less than 100,000	59%
101,000-250,000	12%
251,000-500,000	15%
501,000-1 million	4%
1 million-5 million	8%
More than 5 million	2%

Half the total revenues generated by the surveyed businesses came from technical services, followed by the manufacture of environmental technologies (26 percent) and testing and monitoring (10 percent). The breakdown of total revenues by activity is shown in Table 4.10.

TABLE 4.10: BREAKDOWN OF REVENUES BY ACTIVITY
Activity	% of Revenues

Technical services	50%
Environmental technologies	26%
Testing, monitoring and laboratory	10%
Other	14%

Analysis by media, shown in Table 4.11, revealed that water and wastewater-related activities generated the largest share of company revenues (46 percent). This was followed by waste-related activities (19 percent), air-related projects (13 percent) and energy-related projects (12 percent).

TABLE 4.11: BREAKDOWN OF REVENUES BY MEDIA
Media	% of Revenues

Water and wastewater	46%
Waste	19%
Air	13%
Energy	12%
Other (not media specific)	10%

With regard to cooperation with foreign companies, 11 percent of the environmental businesses surveyed operate a joint-venture with a foreign partner. The largest number of partners involved in joint-ventures with surveyed companies comes from Germany (four joint-ventures), followed by the France and the United States (two joint-ventures each). The main foreign languages spoken by Romanian business representatives are English, French and German.

REC * PUBLICATIONS * EMERGING ENVIRONMENTAL MARKET 2 * ROMANIA