President of Competition Council: 2020, clearly different year; our economy has performed surprisingly well

President of the Competition Council Bogdan Chiritoiu considers that the Romanian economy has performed surprisingly well in the pandemic and there has been an excellent ability to adapt on the part of the private sector. "2020 was clearly a different year. It is remarkable that sectors of the private economy have adapted very well. Chain stores, with a few problems at the beginning, managed to have food, there was no shortage, although the carriers were having problems, borders were being closed. In spite of all this chaos, the food industry worked, the communications networks were operational, with a huge increase in traffic. This shows an ability to adapt to the crisis that is excellent on the part of the private sector, as well. Because some say the state has to be resilient, the private sector is too cheap, they are interested in margins, they don't want to invest in redundancy. I don't think it's true, we have had industries that have coped. Overall our economy has performed surprisingly well," Bogdan Chiritoiu told private TV broadcaster Digi24 on Sunday. He mentioned, in context, the support provided by the states, a measure he considers unprecedented, and the great convergence in measures at the level of the European Union. "It was an unprecedented movement of support from the states and we went hand in hand with the other states in Europe. The idea of keeping people at home with 75 percent of the salary paid by the state is something that has never been seen before in Europe. The demarche was massive, led by the European Commission, which was very prompt, and all European states went in much the same direction with the same measures. There was a great convergence in measures. All in all, the health part is tragic, but from an economic perspective, things have gone better than expected. This gives us a push towards digitalization. When the idea of teleworking was launched, I was afraid that no one would work anymore. It worked. In our case, between 30 and 50 percent were at the office. We have completed more investigations than in previous years. At least in the short term, people have adapted well to teleworking," the president of the Competition Council concluded. AGERPRES (RO - editor: Andreea Marinescu; EN - editor: Simona Iacob)

Continue reading on: