Financial Press Review, 7 March

The Labour Code, restructuring at the Ministry of Finance, underfinancing of universities and when we will actually overcome the financial crisis are some of the topics that today’s financial press addresses.

The Ziarul Financiar prints an article by Doru Lionăchescu, who claims that ‘amending the Labour Code is in no way a matter of life and death for the private sector, as we are made to believe today. (…) Private sector employees do not feel protected by the Labour Code’.

‘He protects himself by what he does every day at work and by his competence, which allows him to look for a better job, most of the time outside Romania. (…) A more flexible work market is essential for recalibrating the Romanian public sector and crucial to maintaining Romania on investors’ radar, be them local or foreign investors’.

Anca Bidian also addresses this topic in Capital Magazine: ‘Two decades have taught us that job security is ensured by performance. Without performance, no law or labour code can make an employer pay them forever.’

The Ziarul Financiar discusses ‘Finance restructuring: 52 000 layoffs, the Financial Guard and the National Customs Authority merge into the National Agency for Fiscal Administration’.

Most of the restructuring will take place at the Financial Guard.

The Săptămâna Financiară discusses the scandal at the customs and the ability of the National Agency for Fiscal Administration (NAFA) President Sorin Blejnar to ‘miraculously relieve himself of any responsibility’.

‘If, just like in Mathematics, we use the principle of reduction ad absurdum, and suppose that the NAFA president has never take a euro outside his salary, should he not have left the minute it was discovered that there was dirty money, traffic of influence and bribery under his command? Can a clean leader of a dirty company be exonerated?’ Radu Tudor, the author of the article, wonders.

The Săptămâna Financiară prints an article entitled ‘How much the state invests in a student’. The daily concludes that ‘there are too many universities, almost 800 if we count private ones, too many students and too little money to improve universities’.

‘State universities only get enough money to avoid bankruptcy; they get money to pay salaries month after month. There is no talk of investment funds.’

The magazine quotes ESA rector Ion Roşca, who criticizes the decision to fire teachers older than 65 and wonders: ‘Who do we replace them with?’

The Ziarul Financiar prints an article entitled ‘PDL believes it has saved the country’s economy and Boc is the savior of our nation’.

‘Although the Liberal Democrat Party (PDL) protects PM Boc, businessmen are very angry at him, because he is not visible abroad, which is why Romania no longer matters.’

‘Emil Boc has been prime minister since the end of 2008, and the Romanian economy has fallen almost 10 percent since then’, the daily points out.

The Ziarul Financiar opens today’s front page with a commentary on yesterday’s statement that businessman Ion Ţiriac made on a TV channel that ‘he will not rush into saying that Romania has overcome the crisis and believes that this will happen in 2012’.

‘Ţiriac says that the Government has not done anything to convince businessmen to continue investing. All the loans taken on by the Government have been used to pay off pensions and to keep the public system going’, the daily reads.

‘We didn’t use any of these loans to spark up the machine’, the businessman stated.

The Ziarul Financiar prints a statement of Guy Poupet, President of BRD-SocGen, the second biggest bank in Romania: ‘There have been no signs of financial recovery, the situation has been the same since the end of 2010, but at least it has not got worse.’


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