Economic Press Review, November 4

The headline on the first page of Ziarul Financiar reads "The bomb of short-term foreign private debt sets in again."

At the end of August, foreign debt showed a 25% boost over the January lowest of the past three years, exceeding 17 billion euro.

Private sector debt amounts to about 90% of that. "This threat grew stealthily, since the NBR only started publishing monthly data concerning the evolution of short-term debt in February", writes the daily.

Curierul Naţional dedicates its main article to rigged public acquisitions by means of the legislation in force.

"There are still big points granted for the liability period of projects that are being implemented", the daily quotes the president of the Romanian Association of Construction Entrepreneurs.

"Right now there are a lot of entrepreneurs that speculate negatively this loophole and that offer an up to 200 year liability period (…), which can only distort competition in the market."

Moreover, "dumping prices is still a widespread practice, prices are artificially lowered" and later, through addenda, boosted, according to legal provisions, up to 50% over their initial value, prints Curierul Naţional.

Ziarul Financiar also reads: "It is not arbitrary that Romania has to account to its European partners as to how it organizes its public auctions sector, how it actually responds to the need for free circulation of goods and services."

"So many rows sprung up on the market because of various public institutions that were accused of having used for their auctions specifications compiled by suppliers that later on won the competition.

"However, not one of the charges has had legal consequences", says Ziarul Financiar in another article in which it points out that "abiding by the rules doesn't also point the way to effective public spending."

The title of the article: "The state could save tens of millions of euro by centralizing IT acquisitions and communication services."

The daily Economistul publishes a conversation with Mihai Tănăsescu, Romania's representative to the IMF.

He claims that "the biggest issue in the time that comes ahead is that, having the resources, we need a significant administrative capacity increase, meant to implement what we already have in mind.

In Money Express magazine, Dan Suciu asks: "If now is not a good time for investors, no matter how much we might encourage them, why aren't we encouraging work? (…)

Well managed changes in the work market can boost consumption, now that we have all understood that exports alone will never drag us out of the financial meltdown.

The daily Bursa presents a report by ING Bank on inflation. "Analysts claim that the NBR continues to be overly optimistic in its expectations regarding inflation.

Overly ambitious inflation targets set by the National Bank of Romania starting 2012 are meant to send out positive signals, but the NBR is unlikely to tighten its monetary policy to achieve them, which will lead to yet another missed target, according to ING Bank analysts.



Translated by: Gabriela Lungu and Elena Daniela Radu
MA students, MTTLC, Bucharest University