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IT is booming to a great extent in Romania, thanks in large part to a tax cut for IT employment started around 20 years ago. There are still relatively few major success stories, in the sense that the vast amount of programmers are working at international corporations dev offices established in Romania, or in some large outsourcing houses; relatively few are working in startups or in Romanian-owned businesses that are creating their own products. UIPath is more of an exception, but the general situation does seem to be improving.

On the other hand, non-IT Romanian industry is very much struggling on almost all fronts, and most of it is nowhere near where it was in terms of competitiveness or just basic output compared to the communist area, thanks in large parts to what the GP was mentioning (a systematic dismantling for parts by opportunistic apparatchiks after the revolution, but also before the revolution itself, as money dried up and the demented regime became more enamored with grandiose projects rather than any practical economy).




IT industry is 6.2% of the Romanian GDP.

Romania's GDP in 2019 was about 5x that of 1989.

The privatization of the inefficient communist industry was indeed a joke. But the free markets and the switch to capitalism allowed a mixture of home-grown entrepreneurial industry and foreign corporations and investments to more than replace and overtake the centrally-planned dying communist-era dinosaurs.


About 60% of GDP is coming from the Services sector, which were more or less non-existent before 1989; Industry overall is about 27%.

While there has definitely been growth, I doubt industry is more than twice in overall dollars compared to 1989, especially if we exclude IT.

Also note that the largest part of industry today is car making, one of the very few industries whose factories were not entirely sold for parts in the 1990s.

Pre-revolution industry was definitely unproductive and primitive in most sectors compared to EU or US counterparts, but many industries that were actually working, even badly, in the 1970s and 1980s basically don't exist at all today (pottery, clothing, many kinds of chemical industry).

Note that the country is still much much better off today than under the communist regime, in all ways measurable or not - I am in no way seeking to say that "it was better before".


You are actually parroting what every communist apologist does despite you claiming otherwise.


You got downvoted but I understand your point of view.


> and most of it is nowhere near where it was in terms of competitiveness or just basic output compared to the communist area

You ok?

> thanks in large parts to what the GP was mentioning

Highly inefficient industries have all but died. Not sure how y’all communist sympathisers have swamped this post and indeed HN.




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