Financial Press Review, 28 March

Fraudulent connivance in the public procurement system, state companies’ arrears, the healthcare situation and the stronger RON are central subjects in today’s financial press.

The Ziarul Financiar opens with an article analyzing public procurement, ‘which amounts to at least 15 percent of the Romanian GDP. The state, through its institutions, is the biggest buyer. Thus, the interest for the state’s acquisitions is very high’.

‘Analysts consulted in the past by the Ziarul Financiar estimated that between 20 and 40 percent of state contracts are previously arranged. (…) Last year, the National Council for Solving Complaints cancelled 603 bids worth 2.7 billion Euro, which means the procedure was all wrong’, the daily reads.

‘For 20 years, there has been a fraudulent connivance between companies and the authorities’, the daily quotes Cristina Trăilă, National Authority for Regulating and Monitoring Public Procurement (NARMPP) President.

Still, ‘nobody has been sent to prison or even paid for the prejudice they caused the institution by questionable procurement’, the Ziarul Financiar points out.

Nobody has been found guilty for spending 25 percent of the state’s income by breaking the law.

The biggest problem, the NARMPP President claims, is that in Romania, unlike France, there are no internal auditing controls.

And authorities do not usually rise against the culprits when there is a prejudice’.

The NARMPP has long drafted a bill that states that central state institutions should hold centralized auctions.

The bill, which would save billions of Euros, has not yet been approved, the Ziarul Financiar points out.

The same daily prints an article entitled ‘Two More Years of IMF Therapy’, referring to the precautionary loan our country has taken from the International Monetary Fund, which comes into force on 31 March.

‘The biggest issue is state arrears, which, according to Jeffrey Franks, are much bigger than the government ones’.

Public spending is still ‘inefficient’, the Curierul Naţional quotes Jeffrey Franks.

The same daily opens with the headline ‘Salaries for Civil Servant or Investments in Economy?’

The daily quotes National Council for Small and Medium Enterprises President Florea Pîrvu, who claims that ‘any spare money should go into investment in the next few years, so we can overcome the meltdown and develop. If we continue to pour money into consumption we will only be repeating past mistakes’.

The Ziarul Financiar prints an article which reads that although global budget incomes have risen by 8.3 percent in the first two months of the year, investment spending has fallen by over 17 percent over the same period in 2010.

‘Authorities Put off Investment Which Would Pull Economy out of Meltdown’.

Under the headline ‘Basic Medical Services Pack – First Step Towards Healthcare Reform’, the Curierul Naţional prints the opinion of the National Health Insurance House President Nicolae Lucian Duţă that ‘one of the reasons the system is underfinanced is our fear to admit that we cannot offer high-quality medical services in all fields’.

Carmen Radu, Deputy Manager at Eureko, shares this opinion: ‘It is no secret that the public healthcare system cannot efficiently handle the resources it has, nor meet quality standards in its present form’.

Under the headline ‘Euro Below 4,1 RON’, the Bursa reads that ‘the National Bank of Romania announced a 4.0881 RON/Euro exchange rate yesterday, the lowest in the past year’.

Some experts claim that the RON upswing is related to the improvement in macroeconomic perspective compared to the situation in countries such as Portugal or Greece, while others believe that ‘the depreciation of the Euro or the dollar does not have any connection to the internal market’.


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