Financial Press Review, 17 May

Under the heading ‘Exports engine began to show misfires. Who will pull economy?’ the Curierul Naţional wrote: ‘Romania technically emerged out of recession at the end of the first quarter, but an engine outside the exports is needed, to take on the leading role.’

’The increases in the administered prices and the sequel of public sector restructuring may limit the growth’s potential’, the analysts claimed in the newspaper.

’On the other hand, the euro area could be affected by further increases in benchmark interest rates by the European Central Bank, while austerity programs will tighten the markets of several European countries with large deficits.’

All papers mentioned the decrease of foreign investments by 22 percent in the first quarter of the same period last year to 379 million euros.

The Ziarul Financiar published an article entitled: ‘Whoever believes that once the day laborers law is passed, the illegal employment will be reduced, is sorely mistaken.’

’Farmers’ dissatisfactions - the main target of the mentioned enactment - are related primarily to the obligation to pay the day laborers everyday.’

The daily Bursa reported about a draft regulation published yesterday on the central bank's web site under which the ‘banks could take control of debtor companies with problems, for a maximum period of three years, which may be extended by the central bank at four years, on valid reasons.’ ‘Nobody knows exactly when "the first house " program resumes’, the Ziarul Financiar headlined.

’The issues come from the fact that the Government has not allocated a new limit of guarantees for the program’s new edition, as the bankers were asked to approve halving of collateral for the already granted loans’, the newspaper wrote. ‘The ball is now in the bankers’ field.’

The weekly Economistul published an article showing that the new education law which minimizes the number of years of compulsory school from 10 to 9 will not help in reducing the dropout rate. Reducing high school to grades X-XII will most likely encourage the decrease in the number of students.

‘They will thus become less accessible to young people from disadvantaged backgrounds and therefore they will be prematurely pushed onto the labor market.’

’Simultaneously with this change in the structure of the education system, it also takes place a frantic action of closing the schools in rural areas, considered to be “unsustainable in economic terms”. The expected consequence of this decision is increasing the dropouts and, consequently, increasing marginalization and social exclusion. All these measures will have as a long-term effect the narrowing of the basis for the elites selection and, consequently, the widening of the gaps between Romania and other countries in central and western Europe’, we read in the Economistul.



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