Financial Press Review, 17 June

The impact of the Greek debt crisis, the Leu depreciation, the suspicions of money laundering in real estate and consulting and state railway infrastructure were some of the topics included in the financial press review.

The Ziarul Financiar published several articles on the crisis in Greece and its international impact.

‘Under the burden of huge debts, Greece goes through the toughest financial times in its history and the entire Europe tries to save it from “bankruptcy”.’

’Given situation in Greece, NBR to closely monitor Romanian banks with Greek capital’, the newspaper headlined.

’The results of the reports showed that these banks are financially sound’, the Ziarul Financiar and the Bursa quoted Florin Georgescu, prime vice-governor of the BCR and responsible for the banking policy.

‘Saving Greece does not guarantee the end of the crisis in Europe and it will only determine a shift of the investors' attention to other weaknesses of Europe. This is what politicians should be prepared for’, the Ziarul Financiar noted under the title ‘Can euro area crisis euro turn into new case of Lehman Brothers?’

‘Euro falls due to Greece’, the Bursa headlined.

‘The euro depreciated yesterday on the international markets, reaching a minimum during the last three months against the dollar, given that investors speculated that the debt situation in Greece deteriorated.’

Instead, the ‘lion-euro quotes jumped over 1 percent on the interbank forex market in one of the most turbulent trading session of the past year, while the euro was rated close to 4.24 lei yesterday afternoon to be priced, its highest level since January.’

The explanation provided by the Ziarul Financiar was included in the article’s title: ‘NBR left dealers staring at the sun’, meaning that it did not intervene in bringing the quotes back down on the market, as some speculators hoped.

‘Government approved price increases in train and underground tickets over inflation’, the Bursa headlined.

The newspaper revealed in another article that while in the European Union, the inflation fell in May to 3.2 percent per year, our country continued to have a strong annual increase in the EU prices by 8.5 percent last month.

Under the heading ‘Real estate and consulting supply money laundering networks’, the Curierul Naţional published an article showing, based on concrete examples, how ‘ the bad legislation or, better said, the lack of normative acts on real estate and consulting services, especially the consulting on setting up offshore companies, encouraged money laundering.’

The Ziarul Financiar covered the state of the railway infrastructure starting from the oldest railways in Romania, the direct link between Bucharest and Giurgiu, which was interrupted six years ago after a bridge collapsed over the river Argeş.

The Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure has forgotten about repairing the bridge at Grădiştea.

Translated by: Iulia Florescu
MA Student, MTTLC, Bucharest University