Carrefour Romania, the division of French Carrefour Group plans to open seven new hypermarkets every year, and to number about 40 new units by 2012, the Ziarul financiar reads on July 21 quoting sources of Hyparlo Company, a part of the French retailer.

Analysts expect enlargement investments to reach 450 million euros over 2009-2012.
Carrefour chain tries to preserve its top position among the hypermarkets, given that newcomers Real and Kaufland top it in terms of stores number.

The market share in this segment will attain about 50% in 2012, says Hyparlo, the company managing the Carrefour hypermarkets in Romania.
Operating in Romania since 2001, the Carrefour chain aims at exceeding the sale threshold of 1 billion euros late this year.

Foreign tourists, mainly from the European Union, are showing an increasing interest in traveling to Romania, national media reported today.

The increased number of tourists who decide to head to Romania’s seaside and mountain resorts, according to the Evenimentul Zilei newspaper, comes after long years of avoiding the country.

According to data by the National Statistical Institute, an increase of 35 per cent in the number of foreign tourists can be observed. From the total number of tourists, 62.5 per cent come from the European Union, of which 35.9 are Hungarians, 22.1 are Bulgarians, 9.1 are Germans and 8.1 are Italians.

In the last month, according to the publication, 616,300 tourits have visited the country, which is a 5.7 per cent increased compared with May of 2007.

The Swiss Golf & Leisure Development company, a joint venture established by five persons from Switzerland and Romania, is investing in a real estate project with an estimated value of 50 million euros, informs daily Business Standard on June 23.

The project includes an 18-hole golf course, a driving range, and 350 homes in the western Dragomiresti Vale area, near Bucharest. Company representatives said the project would also include a hotel with a minimum of four stars. The complex will be completed in 2010.

Prince Dimitrie Sturdza, promoter of the project, said the total investment in the golf course amounted to 5.6 million euros. Swiss Golf & Leisure Development was established in 2006, and the majority share package is owned by Radu Chiriac, a Romanian architect living in Switzerland.

This is the second real estate project with an 18-hole golf course, the first being that of the Silver Mountain, developed by INR Management in the central Romanian resort of Poiana Brasov.

Wizz Air opened its eighth operational base in Cluj, Central Romania which holds an new Airbus A320 plane and local crew members, a press release of the company shows. This is the second operational base of the company in Romania. 

Moreover, the company launched its first flights from Cluj to Valencia and Milan, with a three times a week frequency. Wizz Air chief operating officer Luke Farajalah declared that the company’s objective for this year was to transport 300,000 passengers to and from Cluj.

Wizz Air entered the Romanian market in July 2006 and located its operational base in Bucharest on June 2007. Currently, the company holds its second operational base at Cluj where it offers 17 routes to 10 important European cities.

Romania had the second largest compulsory private pensions market in Eastern and Central Europe last year, in terms of number of participants (4.16 million people), after Poland with 13.3 million and overcame other rapidly growing markets like Hungary or Bulgaria, the Commission Supervising the Private Pension System (CSSPP) announced on Wednesday.

According to local authorities, some 34% of the 4.16 million participants joined the second pillar and fall into the age range of 35 to 45 which basically means that they joined the system without being compelled to. This exceeded any expectations and proves the success of the system.

C&A, a major apparel retailer, with over 1,000 stores in Europe, plans to open ten stores on the Romanian market by 2010, with the first location to be launched in 2009.

“In the first year, we estimate we’ll open between 4 and 6 stores, where we need around 100 employees, and by 2010 C&A’s store chain in Romania will include ten stores,” Herbert Asamer, C&A spokesman for CEE.

The first expansion phase targets Bucharest, while the rest of the stores will be opened in all the cities with over

Romania’s biggest mall opens today in Băneasa, an area in the northern part of the capital, Bucharest, national media reported.

The Băneasa Shopping City will contain 221 stores, of which 70 per cent are open to customers today. The cafés and restaurants are expected to begin work after next weekend’s Easter holidays the Romanian newspaper Evenimentul Zilei reported.

Beside cosmetic and decorative objects, the mall will also have clothing brands that are entirely new to the Romanian market.

A relatively new phenomenon, no shopping malls existed in the Balkans until a few years ago. Just in the last couple of years, however, they have sprung up en masse and largely replaced the street-side stores and the department stores left from the communist era as preferred shopping places.

Just in Bucharest, there are already 11 malls, including the Băneasa Shopping City one, and 10 more are to open within the next two years. In Romania altogether, there will be more than 70 malls by 2010.

Ford on Friday officially took control of Automobile Craiova, the former Daewoo operation here, for a token payment of $80 million and a promise to invest more than $1 billion. Ford executives said the factory will assemble the Transit Connectin 2009 and a new small car in 2010.

Ford plans to boost the plant’s annual production capacity to 300,000 units and double employment to 7,000. In 2006, Daewoo built only 24,000 vehicles there.

John Fleming, president and CEO of Ford of Europe, said the Transit Connect, a compact commercial delivery vehicle, will go into production in Craiova in mid-2009. The vehicle currently is built only in Turkey, but Ford’s assembly operation there is at full capacity. Earlier this year, Ford announced plans to begin marketing the Transit Connect in the U.S. in summer 2009.