Bulgaria and Romania will attract more and more foreign investments because “Austrian companies are pretty much through with investments in new EU member states, but there will be bigger deals in Bulgaria and Romania.” This is the opinion of Robert Kremlichka, director of consultancy firm A.T.Kearney in Austria, reports Rompress Agency, citing the Austrian daily Die Presse. This daily published an index of A.T.Kearney´s foreign investments in 2007, which includes over 1000 of the biggest companies in the world. CEE countries are dropping down, the study showed. Only two countries in this region remain in the top 25 – Poland and the Czech Republic – but both register a drop in terms of investors´ preferences. European investors, who comprised one-fourth of those surveyed, consider Eastern Europe attractive, but countries like Romania, Poland and Ukraine are not in their top 10, Die Presse writes. According to the EBRD direct foreign investments in new EU members (which became members in 2004) registered a slight drop in 2007 – 24.5 billion dollars compared to 24.8 billion the previous year. The main reason is that privatization has pretty much ended in these countries.

19.01.2008 frognews