The privatization of the inefficient communist industry was indeed a joke. But the free markets and the switch to capitalism allowed a mixture of home-grown entrepreneurial industry and foreign corporations and investments to more than replace and overtake the centrally-planned dying communist-era dinosaurs.
About 60% of GDP is coming from the Services sector, which were more or less non-existent before 1989; Industry overall is about 27%.
While there has definitely been growth, I doubt industry is more than twice in overall dollars compared to 1989, especially if we exclude IT.
Also note that the largest part of industry today is car making, one of the very few industries whose factories were not entirely sold for parts in the 1990s.
Pre-revolution industry was definitely unproductive and primitive in most sectors compared to EU or US counterparts, but many industries that were actually working, even badly, in the 1970s and 1980s basically don't exist at all today (pottery, clothing, many kinds of chemical industry).
Note that the country is still much much better off today than under the communist regime, in all ways measurable or not - I am in no way seeking to say that "it was better before".
Romania's GDP in 2019 was about 5x that of 1989.
The privatization of the inefficient communist industry was indeed a joke. But the free markets and the switch to capitalism allowed a mixture of home-grown entrepreneurial industry and foreign corporations and investments to more than replace and overtake the centrally-planned dying communist-era dinosaurs.