Financial Press Review, January 20

The Ziarul Financiar published on the front page the statement of the Raiffeisen Bank CEO, Steven van Groningen, that "it has been noted a greater demand for loans from finance companies and this is is expected to be the motor for the rest of the year's funding."

"Bankers have started the year with moderate optimism, keeping up with forecasts indicating a resumption of the economic growth, but a modest one, the gross domestic product will grow by about 1% after two years of decline."

The same newspaper published an article entitled"IMF recognizes the failure to revive the economy. What went wrong and what needs to be done for the recovery.

We learn that"while most European countries came to shore, Romania is still groping for even the anemic growth in 2011 of which it is uncertain."

"The data shows that the industry alone cannot be the motor of the comeback."

"According to Liviu Voinea, the Head of the Applied Economics Group, the IMF had no objective towards the economic recovery.

The economic recovery has not been an IMF targets - the target consisted of the current account deficit,"wrote the newspaper.

"Could we have made it without the IMF agreement as 17 billions euros have not turned the economy profitable?" wondered the paper.

The article reveals that the things are more colorful."It is neglected the fact that what mattered the most was not the amount, but the rigor imposed on a Fund.

(...) From my point of view" - the newspaper quoted Radu Crăciun, the CEO of investment of the Eureko pension fund –" it was no alternative to the loan, especially since our politicians have always used the IMF as a scapegoat.

"If it hadn't been for the loan, they would have never taken those measures."

Liviu Voinea also argued that the agreement with the fund was necessary, but he qualified the measures as harsh (...) they could have been avoided and the cuts should have been made in respect of the procurement and investment costs.

"The IMF has endorsed the political class into the election year - the idea was to buy the time in order to perform reforms. In reality, just the time has been bought, pointed out Voinea.

The Ziarul Financiar published an article entitled"The Hungarians and Poles PPP system brought hundreds of miles of highways.

Why it does not work the same for Romania?".

"By contrast, Romania had only failed attempts to conclude such contracts for the road infrastructure development.

"Moreover, the new public-private partnership law, who was adopted by the parliament in mid of last year, is"seriously challenged by experts."

They argue that some of its provisions"would favor certain companies by eliminating the auction and, according to sources, there is an EU intention to infringe this law.

"For the public-private partnerships, two parties are required, and often in Romania the public part is more private than private one itself.

Also, the bureaucracy is large enough for such projects to come to life,"wrote the newspaper.

The article pleads for the contracts of short lengths of highway that"generate an more intense competition, so that project costs may decrease."

All papers deal with what the Curierul Naţional called in the heading"A nuclear castling of 4 billion euros.

"It is about the construction of reactors 3 and 4 from Cernavodă, which, as the Bursa headlined,"the Americans, Canadians, Italians and Russians are fighting over."

"The two new reactors that the Romanian state wants to build on the platform at Cernavoda are the largest Romanian investment project in the last 20 years," we read in the Ziarul Financiar.

"The project of two reactors face several issues as one of the most powerful investors of the consortium has retreated, the Czechs of CEZ and Germans of RWE are also on the go."

"The Romanian state has about 60%, but can not afford to invest more than 40% of the reactor project," the Curierul Naţional noted.

The same newspaper published an article on the increasing number of luxury cars sold last year in Romania.

The article's heading:"The most expensive car sold in 2010 is a Rolls Royce Phantom.""If there were taken into account the machines purchased by citizens of a country during a year, then we could say that Romania is not in crisis," the Curierul Naţional writes.

"Romania's rich men have competed this year also in the purchases of expensive cars, whose buying value are higly contrasting to the state economy.

"The Rolls Royce mentioned in the headline cost over 460,000 euros.

"In top of the exclusive cars, Ferrari is a dominant brand, which last year sold 20 units from about a dozen models, with prices between 160,000 and 320,000 euros."

Translated by: Iulia Florescu
MTTLC Student, University of Bucharest