The Microfinance and Self-employment Environment for the Socially Excluded: Country Report Romania

Romania, with a GDP of 5% has a huge percentage of self-employed people (around 39%), however entrepreneurship in this country has been more out of necessity rather than opportunity. The paper perceives micro-credit in the country to be mostly donor-driven rather than Government led. It has been the international donor support that led the Romanian government to recognize microfinance as a poverty reduction tool. Strangely, there isn"t any local Romanian funding for the micro-credit sector. The paper further assesses and rates the Romanian microfinance sector (16.5/30) on various parameters:

1. Entrepreneurial context;
2. Policy measures;
3. Welfare Bridge;
4. Legal Framework;
5. Financial Bridge;
6. Funding and support.

The author feels that the lessons one can learn from the Romanian MF sector are:

• An active MFI network that has started an effective lobby could be inspiring for some countries;
• Romanian policy makers might consider using some of the following practices inspired from other European countries;
• There is a lack of relevant data on social exclusion and self-employment. It is important to set up some data collection system that would become the basis for policy-making;
• It would be good if banks were less suspicious of the MFI sector and started to consider them as partners covering different segments of the market. The financial bridges that exist in France between the MFIs and banks might provide good insights.