Financial Press Review, 12 July

All publications commented on what the Ziarul Financiar called from the title "Surprise inflation below 8 percent. The surprise came from vegetables."

"Potatoes and squash saved inflation", the Curierul Naţional quoted Lucian Anghel, chief economist of NBR, highlighting the "seasonality" of the price decrease by 0.29 percent in June compared to the previous month.

"The last month was only the fifth in a decade in which Romanians enjoyed low prices. Interestingly, all the other months were also (...) summer months, which decreased prices of domestic agricultural products."

But even so "we remained the country with the highest inflation in Europe", Liviu Voinea, the Executive Director of the Group of Applied Economics, revealed, quoted in the opening article of the Curierul Naţional entitled "Summer melted just the tip of the iceberg inflation."

"The odds of achieving the inflation target of 3 percent in 2011 remained null" in light of increasing tariffs to the heat at the end of the year by eliminating the subsidy", we read in the Ziarul Financiar.

The mentioned daily opened with article on monetary policy, which – as Mişu Negriţoiu, general manager of ING Romania claimed – "became an even greater vulnerability than the fiscal policy, which has straightened a lot in the last two years."

"The lions wash into the market rather than helping the economic growth."

"Currently there is no offer for the use of lions in the economy, nor in the credit or savings", Mişu Negriţoiu said, quoted by the Ziarul Financiar.

Under the heading "Imports surpassed exports", the Ziarul Financiar recorded that "the trade deficit widened in May for the second month in a row, despite maintaining a good performance of exports, as imports rose in strides , thus proving that domestic consumption, the main engine of the economy, showed signs of recovery."

The daily Bursa opened with an article on the sale of the 9.8 percent of the Petrom shares by the state.

The newspaper discussed "the misinformation on the locations with the applications of the Petrom offer."

The article"s title: "Petrom offer made impossible by Stock Exchange code."

The Ziarul Financiar published an article entitled "Why agriculture in Romania is still in the “horse phase”."

"Each tractor of Romania covers an area of about ten hectares, while in Romania each functional tractor is responsible for an area five times larger. (...) The agricultural park is outdated and undersized", while "the Romanian industry of agricultural machinery is down."

"The impact of mechanization of the agriculture in Poland was noticeable because the yields were twice higher than in Romania", the Ziarul Financiar revealed under the heading "Every 16 Romanian farmers share one tractor. In Poland the ratio is two to one."

The same newspaper published an article entitled "British investors: Corruption in Romania, at a scandalous level".

"The problem of the scandalous corruption in matters that reached the current activities, the lack of long-term strategies and the state of the infrastructure were the main problems faced by British investors in Romania, according to Raymond Breden, the new president of the Romanian-British Chamber of Commerce and also director of the company audit and consultancy KPMG", quoted by the Ziarul Financiar.

"The issue of the institutional corruption returned in the speeches of foreign businessmen and diplomats in less than two weeks after the U.S. Ambassador in Bucharest, Mark Gitenstein stated that some U.S. companies that developed businesses in Romania complained that the Romanian officials demanded bribes."

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