October 12 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria and Romania are the two countries in Europe suffering the highest financial losses relative to GDP due to skills shortage, consultancy PwC said.
Bulgaria is losing some 13.2% of GDP or 6.2 billion euro ($7.16 billion) per year due to talent shortage, PwC said in its European Private Business Survey 2018 released on Thursday.
Romania comes second with 10 billion euro or 6% of GDP lost annually due to talent shortage.
"We estimate skills shortages are costing the EU28 and the three other economies in the survey (Norway, Switzerland and Turkey) a massive 324
billion euro a year in lost revenues just from private businesses. For the EU31 that’s equivalent to 2% of their gross domestic product in one year," PwC said.
PwC Romania partner for the private company sector Mihai Anita said that it is necessary to re-shape the educational system to meet the needs of the business environment.
"At the same time, a review of Romania’s red tape is necessary in order to make more efficient the interaction between the government and the taxpayer. This rearrangement should be followed by investment in digitalization that will allow a fluent interaction between the two," Mihai Anita said in a statement, commenting on the survey results for Romania.
Slovenia is the best performing country from Southeast Europe in this respect in the PwC survey, losing 3.4% of GDP or 1.4 billion euro annually due to lack of skills on its labour market.
"The skills shortage in Europe is a structural issue. The availability of qualified staff is dependent on factors such as free movement of labour and educational systems that provide graduates with the right qualifications," PwC Global head of People&Organisation Carol Stubbings said. "A dialogue between educational authorities, employers and employees is key to aligning the demands of private (and other) businesses with the expectations of society and qualifications of graduates."
According to PwC, private businesses in Eastern Europe were among the most vocal about the difficulty of hiring skilled employees. Sectors most affected were construction, industry and manufacturing.
Economic losses relative to the country’s GDP due to skills shortage were also high in Poland (5.7%), Malta (5.6%) and Hungary (5.2%).
($=0.8654 euro)