Financial Press Review, 12 January

Under the heading ‘The war of the unnecessary statements: how the authorities solve the oil problem’, the Ziarul Financiar writes: ‘The most important people of the state compete in the policy statement on fuel price rises imposed by the oilmen, but the common denominator of these public outputs denotes a lack of the solutions.’

‘The quotation for oil products increases, the dollar increases in comparison with the leu, the VAT increases, the excise increases. The real problem is not that fuels are getting more expensive, but that the resulted price from these increases is not tolerable for the population,’ we learn from the Ziarul Financiar. And the article is continued with: ‘The European Commission will not ever question the fact that in Romania the salary is lower than the one in Germany, but that the price of fuel is almost the same.’

This is not the matter of the oil companies. In the past two years of crisis, the prices for gasoline and diesel oil has increased by 72% and 52%, while Romanians have been affected by layoffs, salary cuts and tax hikes.

‘Moreover, the demand for fuel has decreased and the oil companies offset the lost volumes by the applying rises that each time correspond with the international prices of the oil products.’ Under the heading ‘Who will lose the oil war?’ the newspaper writes that the National Union of Road Transport of Romania clearly expresses their disagreement with what they call ‘the monopolistic price policy practice by the oil companies and require the Government to adopt a determined position by stopping this phenomenon.’

Under the heading ‘The investigation on fuel prices. The Competition Council has no evidence for a plot of the gas stations,’ the daily newspaper Bursa points out that ‘the investigation on fuel prices has been going on since 2005. The delay of the conducted investigations by the Competition Council has exceeded all court records.’

Unfortunately, the existence of a monopoly is difficult to prove in our country because justice perceives it as a written agreement, writes the Curierul Naţional quoting the spokesman of the Employer’s Confederations Alliance of Romania, Dan Matei Agathon.

Curierul Naţional noted however that ‘in our country the fuel prices are all rise at the same time and level’.

Ziarul Financiar published an article entitled ‘Romania has oil, but gasoline without taxes is more expensive than an Austria without oil’. ‘In Romania its price should be a bit cheaper because we have oil here and so there are no shipping costs.’ On the other hand, the paper reveals, ‘we have higher processing costs.’

In our country the technologies date from 1980, while the Western technologies are more updated. Moreover, the production costs for extracting oil are higher in our country. Romania has no oil fields with natural eruptions, as the oil extraction mechanism has become very complex and expensive. ‘According to specialists, the only thing that Romania can do concerning the price paid by the population is to decrease the VAT’, because it cannot modify the quotations.

‘The international quotation does not care about us’, concludes the Ziarul Financiar.

The Competition Council, more precisely the 132 million lei fines applied by it last year, is mentioned in a article of the Curierul Naţional of which we find out that the highest fine was imposed in the Romanian Post, 103.3 million lei (31,5 million euros) and that on the second place there is the Raiffeisen Bank, which was fined by 14 million lei (3,4 million euros) for providing inaccurate information in the investigation on the banking and interbank services from the Romanian market.

Under the heading ‘The World Bank recommends the Government to halve the number of Emergency Ordinances’, Ziarul Financiar writes: ‘The Government representatives and the World Bank agreed yesterday to start the action plan developed following the recommendations of the financial institution which mainly seeks to simplify the business environment and to reduce the bureaucracy ’, stated the Government sources.

Ziarul Financiar published an opinion signed by Adrian Vasilescu focused on the idea that ‘we need the economic growth like air this year’. In fact, we need a positive GDP. Otherwise, we will inevitably reach a reduction of the budget revenues, particularly those from the income taxes and the added value tax.’

‘This year the Romanian society will be forced to start the battle to surpass the recession’, the author considers. ‘If only the state were to challenge its own enterprises: either to adapt to the competition and competitiveness, or leave the market’ (…) ‘For now, the state-owner is confused and hesitant to throw his business into the deep waters of competition.’

For this reason, the economy still lives on a dangerous drowsiness. Do we want in 2011 more money in the budget? We will only have them if the state enterprises start being profitable, if the added value tax increases throughout the economy and of the GDP will be a positive one’, concludes the adviser of the BNR Governor in Ziarul Financiar.


Translated by: Iulia Florescu
MA Student, MTTLC, Bucharest University