Financial Press Review, 26 January

The Ziarul Financiar opens with the title "The Listing of the Fondul Proprietatea: rapture for the Stock Exchange, prolonged agony for the former owners. "

"The transactions' value of over 50 million euros, was the real surprise of the day"and "the buyers were mainly foreign investors, which is a sign that the Bucharest Stock Exchange is finally visible internationally.

"The actions of the Fondul Proprietatea have captured the interest of the whole market", the Curierul Naţional points pout.

"On the other hand" - the Ziarul Financiar writes - "the price was below the leu's nominal value, for which the former owners were compensated with shares of the Fondul Proprietatea. "

Hence the title of the first page in the Bursa, "Day of mourning for former owners". They have lost 35 percent of the damages from the sale of fund shares.

The Ziarul Financiar requires a little patience by headlining: "Analysts believe the " right price 'at PF will not be found out until the next days. "

The same newspaper commented on the yesterday's statement of the NBR governor at a meeting with the chief economists from banks in an article entitled "Isărescu supports a new two-year agreement with the IMF to avoid slippages in election year of 2012.

" The stake is the continuation of structural reforms’, the Bursa also explains.

The Ziarul Financiar published several articles, signed by different authors, but in which as a motif returns the idea of "the present being as it is because for 20 years Romania hasn't had and still lacks a culture of strategic planning. "

Professor Marian Preda, dean of the Faculty of Sociology at the University of Bucharest, accused in an article that "20 years of changes have not brought new figures in the public view, and those that have appeared have not confirmed.

Therefore, the parties are held by the same figures for years, and the risk the society as a whole is forced to assume is not seeing the reality. (...) Politicians occupying the public view are "professional speakers’, talking about anything and everything’, said Professor Preda, pleading for’ the shaping of public discourse in which dialogue is articulated, not the conflict. "

"The frequent change of the Tax Code means a lack of a tax strategy, of a vision of a tax system that is consistent and coherent", the Ziarul Financiar quoted in an article Mihai Tanasescu, Romania's representative to the IMF.

"The Tax Code and Tax Procedure were designed as tools to meet the taxes payer as instruments of stability and predictability. Unfortunately, in the recent years we witnessed a breach of these principles, which created nervousness and a lack of confidence in the system".

On the same page and in the same vein, we find the opinion of Adrian Vasilescu, adviser to the NBR Governor, that "in economics we have been used to think about today until tomorrow, instead of focusing on the economic policies and options in the perspective term.

And without understanding that out of the recession involves a lengthy complex and difficult process’, that requires the Romanian society a huge effort of speedy restructuring, of efficiency, of perfectioning the whole activity. "

The Curierul Naţional published an opinion article signed by Andreea Paul Vass, adviser of the Prime Minister, under the heading "Renounce of the flat share would be a serious error for the economic decision in the coming years".

" Tax revenues as a share of GDP, rose immediately after the flat share.

Those who hope that the gradual introduction of progressive shares could potentiate them are wrong. (...)

Those claiming a greater social equity in the case of progressive shares fuel a bitter illusion in the absence of ground solutions to the current serious economic problems in Romania, "claimed the author of the Curierul Naţional.

Under the heading "Private medical services speed up: companies want 50 percent increases", the Ziarul Financiar notes that 2001 is the "third consecutive year that defies the private healthcare crisis, and companies announce higher budgets, and investment intentions make acquisitions.

"The private medical sector is growing, but it's growing because in the public sector does not work", the paper explains.

The daily Bursa reveals in an article entitled "With 60 percent more counterfeit products - seized last year" that "cross-border crime remains high, criminal acts that are prevalent in at our country's borders being the illegal migration, forgery and use of false and the last but not least, the smuggling of consumer goods.

The contraband of merchandise, cigarettes, coffee, food, electronics and home appliances, clothing etc. "

Article cites the view that "the volume of smuggled cigarettes in our country is much higher than the amount confiscated last year."

During the year 2010 there were seized almost 19 million packs of cigarettes, with 56 percent more than the previous year.

"The latest data, the smuggling of cigarettes was in November 2010 around the figure 22.8 percent of the market, " we learn from the Bursa.

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