Financial Press Review, 6 June

Under the headline ‘Ferrous Metallurgy Makes Surprising Comeback’, the Ziarul Financiar reads that it has helped ‘many European countries overcome the recession, especially the car industry, but not so much the construction or naval market’.

ArcelorMittal Galaţi announced that it will start the biggest furnace in Romania in September, which will up its output by 3 tons annually.

The Ziarul Financiar opens with the headline ‘With Politically Named Nobodies, the Government Is Ruining State-Owned Companies’.

‘Ionuţ Gogu, board member at the Romanian Post until last Thursday, is a shareholder at a company run by Communication Minister’s wife, UM Soft, which makes business with many state-owned companies. Until last year, he managed the company where Minister Valerian Vreme used to be a shareholder.

‘During the past years, the Romanian Post has recorded hundreds of millions of Euros in losses’, the daily reads. ‘Economists believe that politically named managers affect the economy, and the only way to undo the situation is complete transparency and a standard of professional competence. Currently the companies are completely in the dark’.

The România Liberă begins a series of articles about underground business. The black economy is estimated around 40 billion Euros annually. Half of this money would have sufficed to weather the crisis without any foreign loan. (…) The underground economy is around 30 percent of the GDP. Big businesses which go around taxes, which usually have political protection, have harmed the state budget and endangered the national economy. For this reason, last year, the Supreme Council of National Defense passed a number of measures especially designed to fight tax evasion’, the România Liberă reads.

Today’s articles deal with oil product businesses, ‘one of the areas most affected by tax evasion’. The headline is ‘Gray Business – Oil. Politicians and Former Intelligence Agents Involved in Oil Traffic’.

The Capital Magazine prints an analysis under the headline ‘SLU Promises, Between Populism and Reality’. ‘Improbable. The main taxes are lowered, but collection improves. Budget spending increases, but the deficit is acceptable. How realistic is the opposition’s program?’ the magazine wonders.

A Curierul Naţional headline reads: ‘State-approved Irregularities at Năvodari’. The document from 2008 with harmless waste substances clearly includes dangerous substances as well. The toxic waste was to be stored 1.5 km away from Năvodari and 3 km away from the touristic area of Mamaia.

The daily Bursa prints an article which reads that, because cucumber exports to Germany and the Check Republic have ceased, ‘the Romanian producers lose 100 000 Euros every day’. ‘The Romanian cucumbers meant for export in EU countries might be donated to hospitals or nursing homes, because agreements on intercommunity trade have been blocked, Adrian Rădulescu, Secretary of State at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, said on Sunday.

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