Financial Press Review, 16 February

The economy stabilisation, the corruption cancer in customs, the excessive number of civil servants and the higher prices of food are the central topics in the economic press.

The Ziarul Financiar opens with the headline ‘Pleasant surprise: the economy declined by only 1.2 percent in 2010, while estimates were of 2 percent. ‘Does the slowdown of the GDP decline in 2010 announce the return to growth in 2011?’, the newspaper asks.

‘Are we getting out of recession?’ is the headline of an article in the Curierul Naţional that provides an answer: the end of the recession will occur in the first quarter of 2011.

In an article entitled ‘0.1 percent growth for GDP in the fourth quarter’, the Bursa shows that the economic recovery was based on industry and construction.

In the Ziarul Financiar, Adrian Vasilescu notes that ‘we have been pulled back by two indicators: consumption and investment. It’s towards them that our eyes should look in 2011. (...) It would be good if the emphasis were shifted to direct investment.

Such investments will not come though in the real economy in their desired proportions, if the accelerator of structural changes is not pressed’, the author added.

The Ziarul Financiar published an article under the headline ‘4 civil servants responsible for a paper - one drawing it, one checking it, one approving it and one signing it.’

The author, Adelina Mihai, revealed that the government, whose restructuring has been expected for years, is still oversized.

‘There are still many questions about the way this reform has been performed. (...) Some voices say that the restructuring would be false and that there is no saving, and that the money are used from staff charges to another accounting structure, while the redundant state employees remain working, either by collaboration contracts, either by companies providing outsourcing services. That would explain how three-quarters (77 percent) of the nearly 630,000 who are unemployed in the month statistics December last year came from the private sector and not from the state.’

The newspaper estimates that ‘the state could save over 2.7 billion per year (...), if they had restructured the paper operators.

The 22 magazine opens with a grouping of articles under the headline ‘cancer of corruption in customs, in which we read that: ‘The facilitation of trafficking for bribes of thousands of euros per day, to which it adds the functionality bought on big money - this is the image of sector which should not only provide security at the borders of Romania, but also of the European Union.

When France and Germany have told us that we had failed the Schengen exam, we bragged with the acquired technical criteria, while the smugglers were crossing the border whistling the profit in unison with the publicans being satisfied at their pockets.’

‘In the midst of the economic crisis, the border tax evasion can be sensed in the budget. Furthermore, it appears that the pathway of the obtained money goes transparently, to politicians, to the ones holding the reins of key positions. If they truly wanted it, the customs clearing would have been triggered in the earlier years’, the magazine writes.

The newspaper Bursa informs us that within two weeks, ‘Potatoes will cost a euro per kilo.’

Like in Vienna.

‘In January the prices of potatoes increased by 6.02 percent.’ The price of potatoes is likely to rise again, because there is a great disregard for agriculture in Romania’, the newspaper quoted Ion Benea, the president of the National Foundation ‘Potato in Romania’.

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