New Broom, Age 31, Tries to Sweep Away the Economic Past

The walls of his small, sparsely furnished office are bare and dirty. One of the windows is broken.

Florin Bonciu is too busy to notice. At just 31 years of age, the diminutive Bonciu has a mission--to pull Romania’s economy out of the abyss--and to that end he is putting in 14-hour days, six and sometimes seven days a week.

Part enthusiastic cherub, part hard-nosed economist, Bonciu is promotion director of the Romanian Development Agency, whose Herculean task is to attract foreign investment to a country that has still only tentatively embraced capitalism.

Untainted by service in the Communist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu, Bonciu represents the new breed of officials who will have to take charge before Eastern European countries can emerge as serious economic competitors.

Romania does not have many such officials. A graduate of Romania’s Academy of Economic Studies, he was permitted during the Ceaucescu years to have contacts with the West. He had been a researcher at the Institute for World Economy, where he was accorded such privileges as the opportunity to read Time magazine and the International Herald Tribune.

“We were the only ones to be in touch with the rest of the world,” he says. “It wasn’t easy, but it was possible.”

His current job may not be. He labors under legal handicaps: By limiting profits that foreign companies may take out of the country, Romania discourages foreign investment. And he must endure physical burdens: Romania’s telephone system is so antiquated that he cannot dial directly to the foreign companies he is trying to attract.