Financial Press Review, 8 March

The Curierul Naţional opens with an article entitled 'Will war against evasion be effective?', in which we read that : 'In the recent years tax evasion in Romania increased alarmingly, and some estimates for 2010 show that it has reached the sum of 40-50 billion euros, or about 40 percent of the GDP. (...) The government lately started a real fight against this phenomenon hoping to diminish not only its magnitude, but also to raise a lot more money for the budget.

'Both entrepreneurs and financial analysts are though skeptical about the effectiveness of these raids, which in their opinion are just for the image', the newspaper wrote. 'The fight against tax evasion must be led towars a higher evasion . (...) Tax evasion does not lie in three tons of meat or two tons of sugar', but checks must be made in 'high-fraud areas such as oil, alcohol, tobacco and agriculture.'

The Ziarul Financiar published an article entitled 'Guards and Customs: will they or will they not be dismissed by NAFA?'. The Head of the State 'intends to give the Financial Guard and National Customs Authority one more chance', the newspaper wrote quoting a businessman's view that 'how these institutions will operate doës not matter as much as what they will do'. The Ziarul Financiar covered the Public Ministry in an article. 'Every NAD prosecutor has on average only 3 (three) cases sent to court' in 2010.

'However, there were more industrious, because in 2009 they sent an average of only 2 (two) cases of corruption.' 'In 2010 the prosecutors have settled 518 000 files but in over 90 percent of the cases they have not filed any criminal prosecution or they have even removed it. (...) But the high-level corruption cases, at least the over exposed ones, have been commuting between the judge and prosecutor for years. There are no notorious cases of convictions, and corruption cases are only a small part of the number of crimes', the Ziarul Financiar revealed.

The Ziarul Financiar also wrote: 'There is no clear data regarding the number of years the many files stay with the prosecutors before going to court, nor of the comparative statistics of the number of cases submitted by the prosecutors to Courts or the number of cases in which judges have given a verdict.'

The Bursa, but also the other newspapers, quoted President Traian Basescu's statement according to which 'any money stolen from the state is an attack on its safety, social safety, the safe operation of the institutions, and why not, to its moral safety. Therefore, the battle against the tax evasion eduction still remains a high priority.'

The weekly Economistul published an interview with academician Păun Ion Otiman on the situation in agriculture. 'Unless it is established a firm system of the sales contracts by law, the gray and black markets will continue to operate.'

It is estimated that only the black and gray markets of cereals and oilseeds are about 4 billion euros, and in the good crop years, 5-6 billion. If no 24 percent VAT can be found here, which means about one billion euros, it results the apparent extent that affected the country's budget. If we sum up the whole agricultural production in relation to the non-contractual one, we will find that there are billion of euros in the middle.

'Food safety is also part of the national security', the Economistul wrote, revealing that 'the paradoxical situation today of Agriculture (food import and fallow land, 800 000 of unemployed people and young farmers who migrate to work in agriculture in other countries exporting agricultural products )'.

The Economistul published a documentary about the Romanian agriculture compared to the European one showing that its actual stage is similar to the one that could be found in the six founding countries of the European Union in the years 1957-1962.

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