Financial Press Review. 25 January

‘The test for truth for the Property Fund’ the Ziarul Financiar headlines on the day of the stock exchange listing of the Fund.

‘The fund is expected to attract important investors’, writes the newspaper.

Although the state is the largest shareholder of the Fund, with almost 39 percent, ‘analysts say there is no risk of further abuse coming from the Romanian state’, since ‘starting today, all eyes are on Romania and any negative decision taken by the Romanian Government might arouse the aversion of foreign investors and lower the chance to attract funding for the future listings of public companies’.

‘Investors are on the starting blocks’ headlines the Curierul Naţional. ‘The Property Fund shareholders sorted out by the largest brokerage houses’ is the title of a front page article from the Bursa. The Ziarul Financiar opens with an article entitled ‘Special pensions are just the tip of the iceberg. 40 percent of those between 45 and 65 do not work‘.

‘The special pensions stifle a non-productive economy’. However, ‘not just the 150,000-200,000 special pensions stifle the social security, but the overall situation’: If in 1990 there were 8,1 million employees and 3,6 million pensioners, the ratio has reversed dramatically in recent 20 years. Now there are 5,5 million pensioners and 4,3 million employees.

‘Since '90 until now we have lost four million jobs. Some former employees have gone abroad, some became unemployed, some simply do not work and others work on the black market. ‘The Social Security Budget can not support one of the compulsory pension system’ and must be directly subsidized by the state budget, practically by the taxes. ‘‘The situation, whatever causes it, can not continue in this way,’ wrote the paper.

The newspaper Economistul has become a weekly magazine. In its first issue of 2011 of the new formula, the Economistul published among others a series of interviews with several best known analysts on the chances of stepping out of the recession.


As Mircea Cosea claimed that ‘the recession match should begin in 2011 with a new approach, understanding since the beginning of the year that is not possible to explain the Romanian recession by the effects of the international financial and economic crisis, simply because the vast majority of European countries, but U.S. and South-East Asia have entered the period of economic recovery reflected in Romania by the increase in the orders received from the export industry.

The decrease of 2010 is primarily due to the Romanian internal crisis, of structural, institutional and government management nature. It has been wrongly thought that ending of the recession could be possible as a training effect by the reactivation of the Western activity that would automatically lead to the resumption of our business. The macro-stabilization program proposed by the IMF should not be considered a panacea, as its continuation and completion with proactive policies is necessary.

Top of Form

Romania can not afford a hard and prolonged austerity program without violating the overall condition of existence of the nation and risking serious social contradictions. ‘An eventual resumption of economic growth in 2011 should not make us happy’ – also considered the Elijah Şerbănescu - ‘because, after a pause in which nothing has changed in the fundamentals of the economy, what would actually begin to move is the same ruinous Moriscos of consumption without production and of imports without exports which brought Romania in the current disastrous situation.

In an article entitled ‘The pig breeders - on the verge of bankruptcy,’ the Bursa deals with ‘the crisis facing the pig meat market at the European level.’

‘The pig breeders say they will lose 100 million lei in the next three months, if they do not rise the price of meat,’ headlines the Ziarul Financiar.

Under the heading ‘Public money does not cure the electoral habits’, the Săptămâna Financiară writes that ‘the American experience shows that the financing the election campaigns from public money and restricting or even prohibiting the private donations of the running candidates does not resolve the issue regarding that the influence groups exertg on the political decision.

That's because in this way it is not limited at all the power of the state structures to redistribute the budget incomes to the political clientele, by regulation and ‘commitment contracts’, obtained not before but after the elections, through various forms of influence peddling that can come from the most primitive to the most subtle bribe lobby.

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