Financial Press Review, December 17

The new structural reforms imposed by a future agreement with the IMF, how the state is managing its debts to economic agents, the Rabla programme kept in place and the medical exodus are just the main topics covered by today’s financial press, reviewed by Dinu Dragomirescu.

All financial dailies comment on the IMF mission chief’s interview with Bloomberg. "Romania is no longer considered an average student," the Curierul Naţional reads.

The Ziarul Financiar quotes Jeffrey Franks, who also stated that "obviously, the state hasn’t been completely restructured" and that "the new IMF agreement will require new structural reforms in workforce, infrastructure and investment."

One of the requirements of the current agreement is paying off all the state arrears by April 2011, the Curierul Naţional reads.

The daily opens with the headline "Which companies got their money back from the state?" "The Government allocated 1.22 billion lei from the Reserve Fund so that six ministries can pay off some of their debt to economic agents," the daily reads.

It also quotes Cristian Pârvan, general manager of the National Confederation of Romanian Employers (CNPR), who believes that "the budget allocation process isn’t transparent enough," because it doesn’t indicate which companies are being paid for which projects.

Besides, if the Reserve Fund has its clear-cut purpose, unexpected situations, how are these arrears unexpected?, the CNPR representative asks. "Moreover, he claims that it can’t be said precisely how much these arrears amount up to."

The people who were asked either gave different answers, or said that not even the Ministry of Finance has exact data.

"Lately, this issue has become taboo," the Curierul Naţional reads, pointing out that "since the stand-by arrangement with Romania in May 2009, the Government asked for a derogation for its arrears target at each assessment, because it didn’t manage to respect the assumed quarterly figures."

The daily Bursa prints the conclusions of a survey carried out by the ZEW Center for European Economic Research and the Austrian Erste Group, which reveals that "in December, financial experts’ opinion on Romania’s economic development in the next six months has improved, Romania has become the country with the best perspectives in Central and Eastern Europe."

The Ziarul Financiar deals with the budget bill’s chances of passing.

"It is not sure that the budget will come into force on January 1st, 2011, the opposition is threatening to contest it at the Constitutional Court, because it relies on nonexistent laws: the unitary salary law, which the Government assumed responsibility for in Parliament on Tuesday, but has not yet come into force and the unitary pension law, which had not yet been passed when the budget was set."

"This would be the first time that a budget law is contested at the Constitutional Court, but the third year in a row that it doesn’t come into force on January 1st."

Moreover, the daily reads that "no one can pretend the thousands of pages of law and the almost 10 000 amendments that the Social Democrat Party and the National Liberal Party filed in can be discussed in three or four days." The daily concludes: "The vote is going to be a simple formality."

The Ziarul Financiar dedicates an article to next year’s Rabla programme, which will be kept in place in 2011. "There is no reason to change a perfectly good system," the daily quotes Minister of the Environment Laszlo Borbely.

The same daily prints an article on the medical exodus. "Around 8000 Romanian doctors have gone to work abroad since 2007, and their numbers are growing every year." This is despite the fact that "information from the Romanian College of Physicians show that the 1.9 doctors to 1000 patients average places us last at European level."

The Curierul Naţional prints: "Watch out! Three quarters of butchers sell spoiled meat."

Some retailers take advantage of the holidays to sell their products, no matter the quality, even at the cost of their clients’ health.


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