EDITORIAL: Joinery companies need the local market demand

It seems that the scenarios which predicted the limitation of the opportunities on the export markets for local companies specialized in the execution of thermal insulating windows and curtain walls have a lot of chances to transpose into reality. Although the demand for products manufactured in Romania remained at a quite high level in some European countries, given the similar quality of the systems commercialized at a lower price in comparison with the one promoted by Western companies, it becomes increasingly clear that this resource has began to deplete. The causes are multiple and reside mainly in the budgetary limitations imposed by the austerity (mostly by the decrease of the funds used to subsidize the rehabilitation of buildings), the adjustment of the prices of local products at the new medium level, the competition growth etc. So far, in present days, the external supplies are far from representing the cure at which many companies appeal in order to overcome the problems caused by recession and to ensure the optimal coverage of oversized production capacity - a legacy from the period of extensive development of the local window market. This phenomenon can be interpreted as a return to normality, although there are economic theories that sustain the idea of exclusive concentration on export in order to ensure an optimum efficiency of the national economies. Even so, such strategies are implemented only in two particular cases: in countries where the domestic consumption is low enough to justify such an approach or in areas where the industrial production is so large in rapport with the domestic demand that the surplus should be transferred in other regions (the case of Germany). Romania is not in any of the situations mentioned above, and for this reason it is necessary to encourage a balance between exports and national deliveries. The fact that for a brief period this balance has tipped in favor of foreign markets can be explained by the unfavorable economic situation of the local market, which has encouraged the growth of an unnatural orientation toward export of the production which could not be marketed domestically. However, this situation is strictly related to the recession and it can not be generalized.