Don’t mention the crisis

The economic situation is the big elephant in the room dominating  everything else in Romanian real estate, but at Eurobuild CEE’s  ‘Back-to-Business’ conference in Bucharest, there was also a sense of weariness with talking about it. “We know it’s there,” was the prevailing sentiment, “but do we have to talk about it all the time?”Unfortunately not mentioning the credit crunch is easier said than done. The extremely harsh economic situation still overshadows all real estate activity – or the lack of it – and there’s no escaping this. The opening presentation by Iulian Circiumaru of AT Kearney set the scene, with the sobering admission that Romania has the lowest FDI per capita in the CEE region and that it will take several years to get back to the GDP level it had in 2008. However, for the first time in a couple of years of Eurobuild conferences in Romania, prospects seemed a little better and there were some glints