Sebastian Burduja, Minister of Digitization: „We are working on legislation for innovative start-ups and a way to finance growth from the start when the risk is very high for investors.”

One of the risks is not having enough start-ups in the pipeline for the coming programs that are heavily funded. Between 6-12 billion lei for innovation through the National Plan for Research, Development and Innovation.

A legislation for innovative start-ups and a way to finance the growth of early-stage start-ups – these are two of the most important objectives the specialists of the ministry are working on to support the entrepreneurial technology ecosystem in Romania, said Sebastian Burduja – Minister of Research, Innovation and Digitization, during the third edition of Investors Day.

„I think the role of the Government is to not stand in your way and to make your work easier. A few weeks ago, we adopted PN 4 – the National Plan for Research, Development and Innovation. It is a plan with a budget of 60 billion lei, a plan that’s quite ambitious, and the funding should be completed by 2030. Within it, we have included an innovation program that is budgeted to access about 10-20 % of the plan (6-12 billion lei), which adds to the opportunities in the PNRR and POCIDIF (Operational Program Intelligent Growth, Digitalization and Financial Instruments), which I’m sure you already know about. All in all, we are talking about billions of euros that will be available for the Romanian start-up ecosystem and, probably, also for the regional one. Romania has every asset it needs to become a regional hub. And our country should play this role with vision and courage”, said Sebastian Burduja – Minister of Research, Innovation and Digitization, at Investors Day – which took place at BT Stup.  

Sebastian Burduja added that in order to support tech entrepreneurship, the ministry is working to solve two problems that are more difficult than those having to do with money, as this field does not have financing difficulties.

„We need better legislation for start-ups, for funds, so that we can treat innovative start-ups differently from the way we treat an ordinary small company. Our legislation is from 32 years ago. I support a new law for commercial entities, I know it’s a «Pandora’s Box», I know many say it’s impossible, but we should aim to create a new type of commercial entity for innovative start-ups. They will have much more flexibility and will be able to have a much higher growth here, in Romania. This is an important item on our list of goals. And we will need your help, because we will have endless discussions in Parliament, with commercial lawyers, banks and other entities”, said the minister.

The second objective is about financing start-up growth from the early stages.

„We want to support them from the moment when the risks for investors are at the highest level. World Bank data show us that we have many start-ups in Romania, they are created, but they die quite quickly, compared to other countries. And their specialists told us to find a way to finance them. Look at what they have done it in Israel, in Silicon Valley, look at Ireland and many other countries.

And I came up with this idea of ​​the Romanian Innovation Fund, a „fund matching” the investment fund, through which the Government will match the financing of private investors – both VCs and angels. The selection will be made by private sector criteria and methodologies. The state will finance this instrument, but it will interfere as little and efficiently as possible. It is a big paradigm shift for the Government to think this way. We thought of ways to attract local authorities into this mix, to see if they want to contribute, to compete to attract the most promising start-ups because, often, positive change comes from the local area.

These things are complementary to what is happening through the European Investment Fund and many other programs. Because one of the risks is that we don’t have enough pipeline (not enough start-ups in development) for many of the programs that are coming and which are heavily financed”, explained Sebastian Burduja.