BUCHAREST (Romania), March 5 (SeeNews) – Romania's government needs to focus on improving the judicial system, strengthening anticorruption efforts, removing rigidities in the labour market, and further modernising the financial sector, U.S.-based think-tank The Heritage Foundation said.
"Although the Romanian economy had been rising through the ranks of the moderately free for more than a decade, it fell back a bit this year," the U.S think-tank said in the 2021 Index of Economic Freedom published earlier this week.
Romania’s economic freedom score is 69.5, making its economy the 43rd freest in the 2021 Index. Its overall score has decreased by 0.2 point,s primarily because of a decline in fiscal health. Romania is ranked 26th among 45 countries in the Europe region, and its overall score is below the regional average but above the world average.
Regarding the rule of law, the Heritage Fiundation noted that property and contractual rights in Romania are recognised by law, but enforcement through the judicial process can be lengthy, costly, and difficult.
Although the judiciary is generally independent, courts are vulnerable to political influence and suffer from a lack of expertise and high levels of corruption, bribery, and abuse of power persist, and anticorruption efforts have been uneven, the Foundation added.
The 2021 Index is the first one in seven years in which Romania has increased its business freedom, as the country now allows voluntary value-added tax registration, which takes less time than mandatory registration.
Despite some progress regarding market openness, Romania's uneven regulatory system still tends to discourage foreign investment, the Heritage Foundation concluded.