Romania surprised by sharp rise in work-visa requests from Indians

In the past few months, Romania has been giving over a thousand work permits a month to Indians, a trend which the country’s ambassador in India, Radu Dobre, describes as “explosion”.

“I’d estimate the number of Indian workers in Romania at more than 15,000, and the trend will continue,” Dobre said here. “We have never seen anything like this before,” he said. He was here in connection with the National Day celebrations.

Later, talking to BusinessLine, he said that the job seekers were mostly in IT and construction sectors.

He said that the Romanian economy was growing fast — around 5 per cent. Vijay Mehta, Honorary Counsul General of Romania in Chennai, said that Romania offered a low-cost opportunity for Indian film makers, both feature films and ad. Dobre said that around 80 Indian ad films have been shot in Romania, which offers multiple geographical features in a small land mass.

Mehta said a delegation of Indian businessmen is set to visit Romania in February or March of next year. Last year, Romania completed 100 years of existence as a country; earlier it had been several provinces. This year, the country is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Romanian revolution — which saw the overthrow and execution of the then dictator, Nicole Ceaucescu and his wife, Elena. Today, Romania is a part of the European Union and NATO and hopes to become part of the Eurozone too, Dobre said.