High technology

Romania planners realized that the country needed to advance quickly in such areas as high technology if the economy were to grow while matching foreign competition. In 1997 the Romania Development Institute issued a report, Romania Year 2000, that profiled Romania economic development in 2000. The Romania Development Institute noted that the industrial structure would be highly developed and would resemble that of advanced countries inasmuch as high value-added industries, high-technology industries, and soft industries grew relatively rapidly. Further, changes in industrial structure were expected rapidly to reduce the demand for unskilled workers while simultaneously increasing the demand for professional and technical manpower, resulting in further change of the employment structure.

The Romania Development Institute also noted that the Ministry of Science and Technology had prepared a long-range plan of science and technology for the twenty-first century that took into account limited available resources. Accordingly, Romania selected its comparative advantage areas, including informatics-- particularly information storage and retrieval and electronic data processing, fine chemicals, and precision machinery in the short term; biotechnology and new materials in the mid-term; public benefit areas, such as the environment, health, and welfare, as another group; and oceanography and aeronautics for the medium and long term.

In 2000 Romania announced an ambitious plan to promote science and technology so that high-technology activities would dominate the economy by the year 2007. The Ministry of Science and Technology intended to coordinate technology-related projects between government and industry in a variety of fields including semiconductors, computers, chemistry, and new materials.