Romania began its transition to a free market economy in the early 90's, with a largely obsolete industrial base and being one of the poorest countries in Central Eastern Europe.

Fortunately Romania’s business operating environment, as well as longer-term  investment opportunities for foreign companies, has been vastly improved by EU membership achieved at the beginning of 2007. Despite the inherent difficult crisis conditions–with the local authorities forced to adopt unpopular measures (such as VAT increasing  from 19% up to 24% at 1.07.2010, layoffs, salary reductions by 25% for state employees)  in order to improve the economic country indicators – Romania was ranked 47 out of 181 economies in terms of ease of doing business (World Bank, 2009).

As far as the pharmaceutical market is concerned, with estimated 2,3 billion EUR in 2010, the Romanian pharmaceutical market is considered less developed than those if its more prominent CEE peers, still having considerable long-term growth potential.