Iulian Sorescu, Kinstellar: “The pace of development in the automotive industry should be maintained by the authorities through state aid schemes”

“In recent years, in discussions with the authorities, we have insisted that Romania launch state aid schemes to support research and development in the automotive industry. Last year, at this conference, we explained that we have a state aid scheme for IPCEI, based on which 3 companies were approved and received money to develop interesting projects in Romania,” Iulian Sorescu, Partner, Finance and Business Advisory, Kinstellar said at Automotive R&D Conference organized by Automotive Today and The Diplomat-Bucharest.

Key statements:

• We want this state aid scheme to continue in a form that is functional in the long term. In addition to IPCEI, there is another state aid scheme for research and development, specific to the automotive industry, a scheme called PoCIDIF (Smart Growth, Digitalization and Financial Instruments), with a generous budget of 2.1 billion euros, of which 1.1 billion euros are allocated to the automotive industry until 2027. Companies can attract this money for research and development projects.
• It can finance salary costs, technology transfers, R&D infrastructures, equipment, pretty much everything a company needs to develop these projects.
• I wish that the pace of development in the automotive industry is maintained by the authorities, who will continue the state aid schemes in the automotive industry and in all the industries that are progressing and for which Romania has a development strategy.
• In the last 3 years there has been a significant over-demand for state aid, in the sense that the number and magnitude of the volumes of state aid projects versus the available budgets has been multiplied several times. The situations differ from one field to another, but in principle the demand for state aid is higher than the budget and I believe that it will remain the same.