Preliminary issues in preparing a national strategy regarding services

Without insisting on arguments brought in a different paper in favor of such an idea (Tachiciu and Popescu, 2007), here one should take as a premise the fact that for Romania it is not only possible, but also necessary to combine the catch-up process aiming at reducing the development gap, with a modernization process fostering a competitive knowledge based economy. The present article presents five challenges faced in designing a national strategy for services sector development in Romania: overcoming the weakness of our policy design capacity, assuming the development gap, understanding the long run competitive potential, managing the heterogeneity of the services sector and taking into account the cultural barriers.