WB’s Proskuryakova : Romania should be united in terms of geographical borders, opportunities for its people

Romania is getting close to its 100th birthday with a lot of things to be proud of, but it’s important to be united not only in terms of its geographical borders, but also in terms of the opportunities that it gives to all its people, Country Manager for Romania and Hungary of the World Bank Tatiana Proskuryakova told AGERPRES in an interview. She underscored that Romania has highschool students who win international competitions and great engineers, IT professionals, but not all the country inhabitants have the possibility to get here, because they encounter barriers related to their social background or the fact that they come from rural areas. In her view, these differences could be diminished as the investments in the education and healthcare systems increase, which would determine more Romanians to stay or return to the country. At the same time, practitioners should be consulted and allowed to decide how to best use the funding. Another paradox which the World Bank representative sees in Romania is the fact that poverty remains high as the country gets richer and richer, this being another proof that not all the people take advantage of the good economic results. Moreover, if she were Romania’s Prime Minister, Tatiana Proskuryakova would clearly focus on the development of the country, taking into account that Romania recorded its greatest progress when preparing to join the European Union, when there was a clear vision and everybody knew what to do.    How does Romania look like in its key-sectors?   So, I think that Romania is coming to its 100th birthday with a lot of things to be proud of. It’s a very impressive country, a member of the European Union, one of the fastest growing countries in Europe and also together with Poland, Romania is one of the countries that benefited most from the EU Cohesion Policies. So, my main message is that Romania should be very proud of the accomplishments. Another thing that it’s important to know about Romania, when you look at how it is developing, is that, unfortunately, as the country continues to grow its social and geographical divisions are not closing up. And that I thing, it’s the greatest challenge that Romania is facing today.   Can you tell us which is the most impressive thing in Romania that we did in the last 30 years for example?   I think that Romania has really changed its model of development and the fact that the country has embraced democracy, and has started the process of transition with market economy, joined the European Union, all of these were decisions that are the foundation of today’s success for the country and the foundation of the future prospects for Romania. So, I think, that’s the most impressive thing that happened and everything else flows from that.   What about the differences between our country and the developed countries?   As I said, in my mind, the greatest challenge that Romania is facing is the continuing divisions, social and geographical divisions in the country. And I think this is a topic that is particularly pertinent as we talk about 100 years of unification in Romania. I think it’s very important for Romania to be united not only in terms of its geographical borders, but also in terms of opportunities that it gives to all its people, regardless of where they are from or what social background they come from. This is, I think, the challenge, but also the opportunity, because I think if Romania succeeds in healing this divides, than sky is the limit for its development. Social cohesion within the country is not only the right thing to do socially and morally, but it’s also great economic policy, because we see that this could be a foundation of sustained growth in the future.   So what should we do?   I think the most important thing is to invest in education. You might have seen our report recently on human capital and this report makes a very compelling argument, that investment in human capital, in skills and in health of the population is what makes a country competitive and what makes people able to lift themselves out of poverty, and create welfare for themselves and for their neighbors.   In Romania what we see is huge contrasts. On the one hand, Romania produces the best professionals in the world. Every year highschool students from Romania win international competitions in science, in technology, we have a very robust IT sector with great engineers and IT professionals. At the same time, we see that in rural areas, often, young people do not have the same advantages. Only one percent of high-performing highschools are in rural areas. But 83 percent of non-performing highschools are in rural areas. And healing this divide, giving opportunities to all children in Romania to do well in life it’s something that will set up this country for competitiveness in the future, in a new economy. So, if you ask me for one thing where I would invest, I would invest in education. And if I may, I wanted to tell you a story. I traveled lot in Romania and I met a lot of people, and we have a project called ROSE [Romanian Systematic Education – e.n.], which is focusing on education, and in particular, in helping schools that struggle, helping children at risk of dropping out of school. And I recently visited two such highschools which were put it in our project, one in Pucioasa and one in Iasi, and I was really amazed that with a little bit of incremental funding and allowing school principals to use this incremental funding the way they see fit has allowed these schools to achieve spectacular results. In some cases doubling Baccalaureate pass rate in one year and significantly reducing drop-out rates. So, I see great potential here, but I would like to encourage Romania to invest more in education and skills.   Are we on...

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