Financial Press Review, 20 June

High inflation, possible consumer credit limitations and Government efforts to limit auto tax refund are just some of today’s financial press topics.

The Curierul Naţional opens with the headline ‘Cipher Behind Parsley Price Increase’.

‘The National Bank of Romania missed its own inflation target five years in a row’.

‘For over nine months consumer price index has been increasing by 7-8 percent annually, the NBR blames the VAT increase shock and other exogenous adverse shocks for the inflationist hot flash’.

‘Romania is still the one with a standard in living red flag in Europe’.

‘Initially prophetic expressions, such as restructuring, privatization, free economic action, have been demonetized because their real meaning has been changed’, Adrian Vasilescu says in the Săptămâna Financiară, below the headline ‘Why We Move Slowly (15)’.

‘Social statistics shows that people are more afraid of inflation than of unemployment. This general fear of prices is spreading’.

‘Without actually having understood that inflation comes with a limited offer of goods and services’, NBR Governor Consultant adds.

The Ziarul Financiar prints an article entitled ‘NBR Prepares New Brakes for Retail Credit, Falling for Five Years’.

The new restrictions ‘might include consumer credit limitation to five years and 30 percent down payment for mortgages in Euro’.

In an article entitled ‘What Are NBR’s Limitations for Consumer Credit’, the Curierul Naţional also reminds us that NBR is preparing ‘special measures to discourage foreign currency credits for people with salaries in RON’.

From the Ziarul Financiar we learn that ‘Spoiled Clients with installments amounting to 80 percent of the salary are now bankers’ nightmare’.

‘Foreign currency credit backlogs increased by 90 percent in the last year’, because the RON depreciated, especially to the Swiss franc.

The Bursa opens with an elaborate article on the public television which, in 2010, recorded losses for the fifth year in a row.

The losses amount to 162 million RON, around 40 million Euro, and set a negative record of the institution.

The report the television itself filed at the Parliament claims that ‘the Romanian Television shares part of the guilt: faulty publicity space, it promoted programs that the public was not interested in’.

Below the headline ‘Government pulls handbrake on auto tax refund’, the Săptămâna Financiară reads that ‘the Government cannot find any solutions within the European regulations to limit tax refunds’.

‘Up to the present, there have been around 40 000 actions in court against the pollution tax and there are chances that the number will increase’, the weekly reads.

Translated by: Gabriela Lungu
MA Student, MTTLC, Bucharest University