Developing Entrepreneurship In Rural Areas - A Solution To Reduce Territorial Disparities In Romania

Entrepreneurship and implicitly the process of setting up and developing small and medium-sized enterprises in rural areas are at low rates and is not a real alternative to agricultural activity in peasant households in Romania. The lack of entrepreneurial initiative in non-agricultural activities hampers the progress of rural communities and thus maintains the largest rural-urban gap in the EU. The evolution is unsatisfactory, even though programmes for the establishment and development of SMEs in rural areas have been operationalized in each Community budget cycle in which Romania has participated. But for successful rural entrepreneurship support policies, it is necessary to target areas and settlements that do not have reliable and easy resources for non-agricultural activities and where free initiative is not based on local comparative advantage. However, the focus and effectiveness of policies and programmes with domestic or Community funding depends on knowing the state of entrepreneurship in rural areas and the local material and human resources that can be grasped in non-agricultural activities. The social and economic gaps between rural and urban areas in Romania have been deep and relative at the same amplitude for many years. Entrepreneurship is one of the main solutions for reducing them, but its development in rural areas is limited by the state of infrastructures, the quality of human capital and, last but not least, by the low demand, in line with the low incomes of rural inhabitants.