Financial Press Review, 22 March

An emergency ordinance passed by the Government on Sunday triggers a Ziarul Financiar article entitled ‘Around 20 000 companies in financial trouble will be able to restructure debt on a five years’ period’.

‘Natural persons and private or state companies can benefit from this. (…)
Payment restructuring is not available for taxes that are declared at customs, according to the law, or for any kind of fine that turns into income in the state budget.’

‘Many companies will be salved’, the daily quotes Minister of Finance Gheorghe Ialomiţianu. ‘If they didn’t have access to restructuring, their accounts would be blocked, repossessed or go into insolvency’. ‘There have been more insolvency cases in February than in January, but ‘two months after, there has been a slight decrease from last year’, the Ziarul Financiar points out in an article.

The Curierul Naţional claims that, inside the governing coalition, there have been talks of lowering the social contributions for the employers in the second half-year, and of reducing the sole taxation quota, ‘to restart to economy’.

‘Entrepreneurs requested this measure last year’, the daily points out. Mircea Coşea writes that reform and anti-crisis policies in our country suffer from ‘global or synthetic vision of the state and structure of the economy’ in the weekly Economistul.

The statement is supported by the conclusion that the new Labour Code does not come with ‘measures to reduce work taxation, perhaps by reducing employers’ social contributions’, nor does it increase performance through ‘depoliticization measures in the management of companies and firms with public capital’.

Another argument is ‘lowering the quality of higher education by forbidding professors over 65 to be thesis advisors’, the author claims.

Constantin Boştină also notices in the Economistul the lack of short, medium or long term programs and strategies, as proven among other things by ’40 000 unfinished investment projects in the past 20 years’.

‘No pigs left in one month’ the Bursa reads. ‘Every day, the pig stocks from one or two farms are sacrificed because farmers go bankrupt’. The problem is the black market. ‘Illegal pork trading amounts to 60 percent of the market’, Gheorghe Caruz, Romanian Pork Meat Patronage President, claims.

‘There have been promises, but nothing has been done’. ‘1.8 million cars older than 10 years left’ the Curierul Naţional and the Bursa read. This situation requires that the Rabla Program to be continued.

PM Boc believes the Rabla Program a first component to stimulate the economy and support domestic car production’, the daily reads.

From the Curierul Naţional we learn that ‘the City Hall will be able to refurbish facades without the owners’ consent’. ‘The local authorities will cover the costs, which they will then claim from the building’s owner’, the daily writes, referring to a press release by the Ministry of Regional Development.


Translated by: Gabriela Lungu
MA Student, Bucharest University