First Year of Pandemic for Foreign Direct Investment at the Western Border of Romania. Timiş County
First Year of Pandemic for Foreign Direct Investment at the Western Border of Romania. Timiş County

Summary/Abstract: Foreign direct investment, the western border of Romania and the border restrictions in the first year of pandemic are the main directions of this article.The paper aims to determine the effects of border closure and its associated restrictions on foreign direct investment in Timiș County, a county situated on the Romanian Hungarian border, in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. In other words, we asked to what extent and what way the border restrictions affected the companies with foreign capital, whether there were any reductions in turnover or even closures of companies, or whether, on the contrary, there were increases and new registered companies. Specifically, the turnover and number of employees of foreign owned companies over three years were analyzed, two years before the pandemic and the year of the pandemic (2018–2020), relying mainly on quantitative methodology; the measures taken by the authorities, especially measures related to border were identified, relying mainly on qualitative methodology. An own database, constituted with the help of the official sources from the Ministry of Finance of Romania, was the source for the financial data, and data provided by the Ministry of Internal Affairs was the source for legislative information. The analyzed companies were chosen based on the turnover criterion of at least 500,000 euros in at least one of the years 2018–2020. The ranking of the top ten largest companies with foreign capital in Timiș County has not undergone substantial changes during the three years. In the first year of Covid-19 pandemic, the number of dissolved/bankrupt/deregistered companies was higher than the number of newly established foreign companies. Compared to 2018 and 2019, several companies recorded decreases in turnover in 2020, some reaching 100% decreases, while others recorded increases, the large increase being of over 2000%. In 2020, the first restrictions related to border were included in President’s decree establishing a state of emergency and the last restrictions were in December, included in the document regarding the extension of the state of alert. During 2020, a number of restrictive measures were adopted through decrees, laws, decisions, emergency ordinances and others.

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