Analysis of Correlations between the Socio-Economic Resources and the Regional Development Profile in Romania in 2003

The approach of regional development has represented a tendency of scientific research in the economic and social area in the last 35 years. This theme was launched during the 70's in Germany, on the occasion of the discussions concerning the involvement of the Council of Ministers in the lands' administration. After the conclusion of the European Union Treaty (Maastricht, 7th February 1992), the regional development policy became a stable part of the EU architecture.Assuming that the development potentialities are based on similarities in local resources, we intend to study to what extent the current territorial organization is in harmony with the Romanian counties' resources and development potential. For expressing resources and potentialities we have chosen, depending on the information existing in the literature on economic and social development, a number of 22 variables (see appendix).For analyzing the regional distribution of counties, we used descriptive statistics and discriminant analysis. For identifying the profile of the regions, we used the factorial correspondence analysis. In order to identify the most significant variables, which explain the similarities between the counties and the dispersion of counties according to the chosen variables, we applied the method of principal components analysis. The data concerning the variables considered in this study were taken from the Statistical Yearbook of Romania, 2004. The treatment of the data was realised in the software SPSS. Against the background of the results of regional repartition analysis of the counties, depending on the resources and the development potentialities, we identified the position of the North-East region and we suggested ways of development based on the public-private partnerships vision