ITC has worked on trade development in Romania since the early
1990s. The organization's outreach and capacity building in the
country began almost immediately after the Berlin Wall came
tumbling down. It is the trust, relationships and understanding
built up over more than 12 years that has seen ITC's work yield
fruits.
From wood products to information technology (IT) and fashion, ITC,
working closely with Romanian partners, has helped prepare a range
of key sectors for greater international export success. This has
implied involvement at every level - from macro-level assistance in
the development of a national strategy for export development and
the creation of a related trade support network, to the
strengthening and fostering of private sector networks, to
micro-level assistance aimed at promoting the international
competitiveness of individual enterprises.
Now, with accession to the European Union (EU) on the horizon in
2007, and with the
myriad challenges and tremendous commercial opportunities this
presents, exporters, producers and providers of goods and services
need to continue their journey up a steep learning curve to ensure
that they make the most of new markets.
In fact, Romanian authorities are so aware of the need for the
population to understand the complexities of EU regulations and
standards that they approved the transmission of a 12-part
television series this year called Ulita spre Europa. The programme
sought not only to entertain, but also to inform Romania's massive
farming community of the challenges and opportunities of trading
with the lucrative EU food and agricultural markets. The populist
TV project, backed by the European Commission, took farming
families through the maze of exporting standards and regulations
while never drifting too far from the reality of life on the
farm.
For ITC, efforts to help Romania's trade development have focused
on:
- promoting a culture shift and change in mentality amongst
Romanian companies to boost their understanding of the need for
exporters to deal promptly, thoroughly and systematically with
international market requirements;
- an appreciation among Romanian producers in selected sectors
(notably, garments and textiles, and wood products) of the range of
analytical tools (including key tools developed by ITC) that allow
exporters to understand, adopt and adapt to the demands of new
markets; and
- enhancing local capacity to build in greater value-added in
products offered and, at the same time, developing the
manufacturing flexibility that can adjust to changing fashions and
tastes to meet the needs of more demanding markets.
ITC's work in Romania began with a needs assessment in 1991 and,
with support and financing largely from
seco (the
Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs), successive projects
were carried out through the 1990s. Key to the success of these
projects over 12 years has been the establishment of
partnerships with public and private bodies and the involvement of
local bodies in the needs-assessment process. In 1995 ITC began a
partnership with the Romanian Foreign Trade Centre (now the
Romanian Trade Promotion Centre, RTPC), which was itself created by
merging a government market research centre and a public sector
computing centre.
ITC played a vital role in setting up the RTPC by giving advice on
how to structure the organization and providing training. It was
also the main contributor to a specialized trade information
library for the business sector and academia. ITC provided access
to the Internet and assisted in the redesign of RTPC's web site,
which included access to ITC's online databases and analytical
tools tailored to allow exporters to make the most of new
international opportunities.
Increasing value-added
Once the RTPC was up and running, ITC worked with the new centre to
focus on private sector competitiveness. The key to success lay in
finding the right local counterparts to work with. In-country
research and assessments saw ITC/RTPC develop a relationship with
the Institute of Fashion, IMOD (
see box), and the National
Institute of Wood. The project approach aimed at strengthening
these two specialist agencies to provide much-needed trade support
services to the business sector. Collaboration with the two
institutes encouraged selected companies to adopt a process that
engineered greater vertical integration, allowing increased
value-added for a number of wood furniture and fashion garment
exporters.
Today, through the sale of products that ITC helped it to develop,
RTPC is approximately 40% self-financing and the success of the
partnership has attracted further public and private sector
interest for ITC activities in the region.
In 2001, an independent evaluation of ITC's cooperation with
Romania was undertaken. It identified several key achievements
including:
- The Romanian Foreign Trade Centre (now the RTPC), established
in 1995, is now recognized as the country's best provider of trade
information services.
- In 1996, in-country experts established the Romanian
Association of Purchasing and Supply Management, following a series
of ITC training sessions. Since the mid-1990s hundreds of
specialists from Romanian companies have undergone training through
the association. The training has introduced modern purchasing and
supply management techniques and shifted attitudes in many
companies to enhance business efficiency.
- Romania was amongst the first countries in the world to
translate and adapt three of ITC's best-known business
publications: Business Guide to the World Trading System;
Trade Secrets; and Secrets of Electronic
Commerce. All three guides are aimed at helping the business
community improve their export capacity.
The success of ITC's trade development work with Romania has
prompted both the private and the public sectors in the country to
ask the organization to continue working with them. Following the
identification of a number of priority needs, ITC has been
requested to develop a complex project that would assist in the
continued development of a number of key sectors in the
country.
"If I were asked to highlight the biggest key to success in
Romania, it would be the close working relationship with a wide
range of partners in the country, as well as the Swiss government
and UNDP [United Nations Development Programme]," said Szabolcs
Piskolti, ITC's Chief of the regional office responsible for
technical cooperation with Romania. "The assessment of country
needs, the subsequent design of technical cooperation projects,
their management and their monitoring were done as a collaborative,
country-based process."
Out of the fashion deep freeze
In just 14 years, Romanian fashion has moved far away
from the drab style of cold war clothing. In February 2004, 12
Romanian fashion and textile companies showed the world of haute
couture why the country has the potential of being a force to be
reckoned with. A national fashion event for an international
audience was held in the Bucharest Hilton, the culmination of years
of successful cooperation between the ITC and IMOD, the Institute
of Fashion.
During the fashion show, based on the theme of "Today for
tomorrow", the Romanian companies presented their own collections
to an enthralled gathering of more than 200 people, including
commercial representatives from Bucharest-based embassies.
ITC's cooperation with IMOD has focused on a series of practical
activ-ities to enable local textile and garment manufacturers to
add value and prepare for a more targeted approach to international
exporting:
- ITC provided IMOD with computer-aided design (CAD) and
pattern-making and -grading software and hardware. A Viennese
company trained IMOD staff in the use of these tools.
- A capacity-building process was engineered to enable Romanian
companies to move beyond the "cut, make, trim" approach to develop
greater value-added offerings.
- ITC provided IMOD with subscriptions to specialist publications
with critically important fashion forecasts for the seasons ahead.
This established a fashion library unique in Romania.
- In return, IMOD committed to making the fashion library and the
computer-aided tools available to interested garment manufacturers
during the project.
- In addition, IMOD agreed to develop, free of charge,
collections for 12 fashion garment enterprises and to provide
seminars on fashion trends for interested companies.
Writer: Alison Clements-Hunt
Organizations mentioned in this story: