Financial Press Review, 13 July

The impact of the debt crisis from the Euro zone, the need of real restructuring, the size of corruption and the problems of Romanian education are today’s main economic topics.

Today’s Curierul Naţional opens with an article dedicated to the debt crisis in the Euro zone, entitled ‘Italian-Like Panic’.

‘The ripple has reached Romania, where the national currency reached this year’s lowest compared to the Euro’, the daily reads.

‘Italian market turmoil ripples into Bucharest. Analysts downplay risks’, the Ziarul Financiar reads.

‘Investors fear that, unlike Greece, Ireland or Portugal, Italy’s and Spain’s giant economies will prove much harder to sustain’.

The Romanian economy is relatively well, and once markets have calmed there should be signs of improvement’, the analysts quoted by the newspaper claim. The daily prints Adrian Vasilescu’s opinion below the headline ‘Do Not Rush to Say That Romania Is in Deflation’.

‘Practically, inflation keeps growing, while growth is slower and slower’.

Until restructuring passes the gates of state-owned and private companies, in order to turn output towards the market and acceleration deflation, we will not gain the trust for credit. As a consequence, we will not have medium interest rates’.

‘Cutting salaries and staff is not restructuring’ the advisor of the NBR Governor reminds us.

The Ziarul Financiar dedicates two articles to restructuring at the Romanian Post, a 300 million euro business with 72 million euro in losses over the past two years, which many see as ‘the milking cow of the powerful’.

The conference that Romanian Post Manager Dumitru Daniel Neagoe held yesterday was ‘unidirectional’ and only lasted 15 minutes, the daily mentions below the title ‘When the first meeting starts with “I have to go”’.

The Ziarul Financiar prints an article entitled ‘Foreign diplomats’ speech returns to the Năstase era: Corruption is Romania’s plague’.

‘Foreign diplomats and businessmen have returned to the corruption topic; this speech was popular under the Năstase administration, but it was abandoned for a while’.

‘Until 2006 you had to bribe someone to bring goods into the country, but after 2007 bribes are mostly related to public procurement’, the daily quotes Raymond Breden, the new President of the Romanian-British Trade Chamber.

The Ziarul Financiar addresses the implications of the current education situation in an article entitled ‘Who will pay for the pensions of the current employees and sustain economic growth: the class of 2011 or the Indians and the Chinese?’

‘As Romania loses the cheap work-force advantage, qualification will become a must-have for exponential economic activity growth’.

‘If strictness of the Baccalaureate continues and even spreads to colleges, it might have a positive impact in the long run, because people will be better trained’, Nicolae Chideşciuc, chief-economist at ING Bank, claims.

‘The economy will not grow unless the level of education increases’, Petre Dandea, Vice-president of Cartel Alfa Trade Union Confederation, says. ‘The trouble is that well trained people do not become teachers, because a 700 RON salary does not motivate them to’.

And coordinating payment with the number of students only sacrifices quality, because teachers will be tempted to pass as many students as possible; if they fail students they risk a lower salary in the future’, the daily quotes Ioan Ianoş, Ph.D.


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