Financial Press Review, 30 May

Today’s Ziarul Financiar opens with the headline ‘Politicians Reject Stock Exchange Privatizations: Opposition Ignores Them, Government Postpones Them’. ‘Listing minority packages of shares for state-owned companies would solve many problems: it would make their activity more transparent, it would make them more efficient and would bring a little extra to the budget’.

‘The Government estimated that it would cash in around 700 million Euros from privatizations, but, although the end of the first quarter draws near, not even a cent has been made’.

‘However, the state insists on staying the sole shareholder at some of the biggest power or transport companies, although most of them are inefficient and not at all beneficial for the majority shareholder’. ‘Why politicians refuse privatizations through the stock exchange, but continue to assume direct, non-transparent privatizations that have been framed upon in the past 20 years, is something analysts cannot understand’.

The author of the Ziarul Financiar article, Andrei Chirileasa, points out that the economic scheme that the Social Liberal Union made public on Friday does not make any reference to stock-exchange privatizations.

The article entitled ‘Cashing In Bonds – Mission Impossible for State Companies’ by Ştefania Enache from the Săptămâna Financiară also discusses the state’s income.

‘The cover letter that the Government and the IMF agreed upon in April-March stipulates that a series of state-owned companies, such as The CFR Marfă National Freight Railway Company, The Romanian Post, National Company of Lignite Oltenia and Termoelectrica, has to make their clients pay off their debt’, because ‘the money raised at the budget is not sufficient for the Government to pay its foreign investors’.

Central level arrears are a consequence of the fact that state institutions have bills to collect.
‘If we look closely at the list of debtors we notice that the companies with the highest debt are state-owned, so, in order to collect the money, the Government would have to sue itself’, so there is a vicious circle.

The Curierul Naţional opens with an article entitled ‘We Start Working For Ourselves Today’.
Although the state has tried to cut public spending and save money, the percent of public spending from the GDP has increased from 2009, reaching 40.8 percent, Eurostat shows.
‘In order to pay all the taxes we have to work for five months a year’, Cristina Chicoş, the author of the article, shows.

‘Once the fiscal burden is acknowledged, there is a chance that contributors will become more demanding with the quality of social services and public spending’, the Curierul Naţional reads. ‘Politicians will become more responsible once voters are more informed and responsible. This is the only chance for mentalities to change’.

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