Iași County, a Growth and Development Pole at National Level

The present global crisis has shown the vulnerability of the economic sector in times of pandemic. In this context, countries need to identify solutions to encourage the economy, at the same time using sustainable development to protect environment. 
Iasi County is located in a less-developed region of Europe, but it managed to gain the position of growth and development pole in the region. 
Romanian authorities and economic agents, both at national and county level, place sustainable growth and decent life for everybody at the centre of their development plans. The aim is to support growth of the productive sectors and to diversify added-value products, creating sustainable and decent jobs, developing SMEs and using innovation and modern technology. 
Local products, as well as respect for traditions and environment are supported. Iasi County Council has established with European funds an agri-industrial park, Transagropolis, offering access to small and medium producers in the agri-business area from the entire cross-border area. It offers storage spaces in normal conditions and cooling and freezing areas, office/commercial spaces. 
As for the industry, the accent is on competitivity, sustainable production and consumption, efficient use of material resources. The service sector is well developed, but the construction sector attracts more labour force than other sectors. 
Two industrial parks are already functional in Iasi County, established by a local authority, Miroslava commune - a park with a surface of 464,400 square metres and one of 252,000 square metres. Two more parks are under various stages of formalisation, one of them belonging to Iasi County Council. In Romania, the law establishes the possibility of offering incentives for businesses in industrial parks, such as deduction/ exemption from various fees and taxes. 
One of the advantages of Iasi County is the labour force, with a high professional and training/educational level (due to the three state university centres in the county). Due to its location near the Eastern border of the European Union with the Republic of Moldova, foreign investments are under the investment potential of the region. On the other hand, being near the border of EU, that is farther away from other regions, leading to higher transport costs, makes the county a lagging one from the economic point of view.  
Textile industry is considered the branch with the most rapid growth, while agriculture is an important branch of Iasi economy, due to the agricultural area covering half of the county territory (representing the raw material to be processed by industry). 
Iași is acknowledged as having well trained IT-ists, with almost 1,500 annual IT graduates. Amazon opened here the first Romanian branch, and at the same time, Iasi has become an important resource to attract young talents for Microsoft. Within CEE Shared Services and Outsourcing Awards, Iași was awarded the „Emerging City of the Year” prize, and was declared the city of 2017 for the development of IT & Outsourcing industry in Central and Eastern Europe. 
With nearly 28.7 billion lei GDP, Iași County was the most developed county in the north-east region last year, according to the data provided by the National Prognosis Commission, contributing with 6.28 % to the national GDP, ranking it on the seventh place in the counties top. 
According to the data from the Trade Register, at the end of 2019 Iasi had 3,800 companies with foreign participation (12th rank at national level), with a subscribed share capital of more than 250 million euro, and this was reflected in the value of average income, the highest in the region, and unemployment rate in 2018 of 3.5%.  
On the other hand, Iași evolution in the last decade also favoured real estate projects. Additionally, the office segment has had an intense development lately, in the last 6 years it has doubled.  
Last year, Iaşi County had exports of almost 1 billion euro, 85.35 % of the products to European countries and 77.75 % outside the EU. More precisely, exports to Germany were in value of 822 million euro, 729 to France and 83 million to Poland. To non-EU countries exports accounted for 92 million, to Moldova 45 million, to Turkey 17 million euro, and to Russia 7.8 million euro.  
Outside Europe exports accounted for over 141 million euro, the main countries being India, that bought products in value of 43 million euro, and South Korea, with 32 million euro and China with 28 million euro. 
For 2030 the targets proposed for Iași County are: 
- maintain GDP growth rate to reduce imbalances to more developed European regions, respecting the sustainable development principles and constantly improving the living standards; 
- promote development-oriented policies, supporting productive activities, creating decent jobs, start-up entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation to encourage formalisation and growth of SMEs,  
- reach high productivity levels through diversification, technological modernisation and innovation, 
- encourage long term competitive tourism, development of agri-tourism, eco-tourism, cultural tourism and improvement of the county image as a tourist destination.