Romania records lowest level of CEO confidence in five years, PwC and EIB report surveys say

Only 25% of CEOs in Romania are very or extremely confident that their company will record revenue growth over the next 12 months.

This is the lowest level recorded in the survey’s past five years: the percentage was 42% in the 2025 edition and 51% in 2023.

The current level is also below the regional average for Central and Eastern Europe (42%) and below the global average (30%), according to the same PwC CEO Survey Romania 2026.

The decline in confidence does not mean, however, that companies have stopped taking action: 57% of Romanian companies have already increased their market share over the past five years, while 52% have expanded into new business sectors, the same survey shows.

One-third of organizations have gone through more than 15 major changes in just the past year, either in strategy, business models, or driven by changes in customer expectations. These changes affect employee well-being in 68% of organizations, workplace engagement in 50%, and workload in 60%.

However, only 27% of leaders believe their organization is effectively managing this pace of change, according to Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends 2026, a study conducted among approximately 3,000 business and HR leaders from 15 countries.

Companies with a high level of technological resilience are 74% more likely to report concrete results from artificial intelligence investments and 66% more likely to be confident in future revenue growth, compared with companies lagging in this area, according to the PwC Global CEO Survey – Mid-Year Snapshot.

Investment by Romanian companies continues, but remains below the European level. Around 78% of companies in Romania invested over the past year, compared with 86% at the EU level.

Access to financing remains one of the challenges: 71% of investments made in Romania were supported by companies’ own funds, compared with 66% in the EU, while 10% of Romanian companies face financial constraints, almost twice the European average.

In this context, companies’ ability to access external financing and sustain long-term investment remains essential, according to the EIB Investment Survey 2025.

At the European level, the trade context deteriorated in the first half of 2026: the European Union went from a trade surplus of EUR 74.1 billion in 2025 to a deficit of EUR 14.9 billion in 2026, according to Eurostat.