Financial Press Review, 1 July

Bankers, there is something in line for you!’, the Curierul Naţional reads in its opening piece, dedicated to the speech that the NBR Governor made yesterday, upon receiving the title of Doctor Honoris Causa from the Romanian-American University.

‘Isărescu warned bankers that there are going to be many restrictions and rules’, the main headline on the fist page of the Ziarul Financiar reads.

‘National authorities and supranational institutions are working on a whole range of macro prudential measures’, the Curierul Naţional reads.

The NBR Governor warned that these measures ‘cannot substitute macroeconomic policies, that is the coherence between fiscal and monetary policy’ or ‘micro prudential policies regarding the sturdiness of credit institutions as entities’, the Bursa reads in an article entitled ‘Isărescu: 6.25% key interest rate will guide inflation towards target’.

One of the measures is ‘introducing a relation between the value of the credit and the value of the warranties’, measure that has been adopted all over the world, but also a ‘tougher correlation of the credit with the income of the client’, the Ziarul Financiar reads.

The daily also gives the opinion of bankers, who believe that the measures ‘will slow down the process of giving out credits and will diminish the chances of sustainable economic growth’.

‘Excessive pessimism’, the NBR Governor believes.

Below the headline ‘Authorities promised IMF 7000 layoffs in state-owned companies by August’, the Ziarul Financiar presents the addendum of the Romanian cover letter that the IMF approved at the beginning of the week. ‘The Government continues the austerity measures that the IMF has imposed, in order to cut public spending’, the daily reads. The Ziarul Financiar article entitled ‘Greeks on their own situation’ also discusses the ‘oversized state staff’.

The Greek businessmen expect their Government to ‘offer a perspective of economic revival’ and ‘implement measures that will diminish the state’s expenses, especially those concerning the administrative staff; there are still tens of thousands of unproductive civil servants and societies that should have been shut down 10-15 years ago’, the daily quotes Jean Valvis, Swiss businessman of Greek origin.

The Curierul Naţional prints an article with the headline ‘How mayors use EU funds meant for farmers’, which reads that ‘mayors that abuse EU funds for agriculture has become an almost general phenomenon in Romania’. If the budget of the EU community proves to have been misused, Romania will have to return around one billion Euro’.

The Ziarul Financiar dedicates Turkey an article, because ‘it made an 11 percent leap forward, compared to the same period last year, the highest rate in the world’.

Turkey has thus become ‘the only country in the world with a two-digit economy growth rate’.

‘The Chinese have reasons to be jealous’, the daily reads further on.

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