The Foreign Investors Council (FIC), in their annual General Assembly on May 4, elected a new Board of Directors. The new Board, which will serve for the next twelve months, is comprised of 15 members (listed in alphabetical order of their company):

Dragos Dinu (A&D Pharma Pharmaceutical); Patrick Gelin (BRD Groupe Societe Generale); Hildegard Gacek (EBRD); Gilbert Wood (Hall, Dickler); Markus Wirth (Holcim); Victor Kevehazi (KPMG); Jean Valvis (LaDorna); Veronica Savanciuc (Lowe); Kurt Strohmayer (Marriott); Richard Moat (Orange); Sofronis Strinoupoulos (Piraeus Bank); David Fuller (PricewaterhouseCoopers); Jose Medran (Procter & Gamble); Shachar Shaine (Tuborg); and Dieter Schulze (Ursus Breweries).

The Board reported that the FIC's primary objective is to focus its attention on enhancing the FIC's lobby policy while consolidating its main product and lobby tool, the White Book. The FIC endorses and promotes a level playing field and the Rule of Law for all business players, both domestic and foreign, without discrimination or preference for any of them.

The current President, Mr. Gilbert Wood expressed his gratitude to the outgoing Board members for their outstanding contribution to the FIC and particularly for the amount of time and effort dedicated for the benefit of the business community at large. Wood also thanked the members of the task forces for their enthusiasm which increased the quality of the White Book. More specifically, Wood extended his thanks to Patrick Gelin, Victor Kevehazi, Richard Moat and Shachar Shaine for their extraordinary contributions to the FIC's activities.

The project that focused the efforts of the FIC task forces and set the FIC's agenda in 2005 - 2006 was the White Book, which was published in early 2005 and updated in April 2006. Both books were comprised of seven chapters: (1) Rule of Law; (2) Taxation; (3) Labour Market Flexibility; (4) Banking; (5) Corporate Governance and Capital Markets; (6) Environment; and (7) Corruption. The 2006 edition credited positive steps the Government of Romania (GOR) has taken to improve the business environment during the period between the third and fourth editions of the White Book, as well as identifying areas still in need of attention.

During the past 14 months, the GOR embraced or solved 34 different proposals made by the FIC, an average of addressing a new challenge more often than every two weeks. This was the most successful period in the FIC's ten year history. This statistic demonstrates the GOR's commitment to institute a modern business environment.

The FIC acknowledges that Romania's economic growth has been strong and the business environment has improved significantly over recent years, but many challenges remain to be addressed to enhance competitiveness and to attract additional FDI in this post-privatization period.

The new Board will continue to lobby the GOR regarding the issues raised in the White Book. Implementing the FIC's White Book recommendations will be a key challenge for the GOR as it goes forward. The FIC is fully prepared to continue to provide the GOR with its full support to help translate its recommendations into action.