Financial Press Review, 17March

The Ziarul Financiar published an article on the new Labor Code which should bring an increase in the employment rate within the legal forms of the working-age population ‘from 58 percent to 64 percent.’

‘Among the most important changes in the new law - it was written in the newspaper - is extend of the probationary period and the duration in which the fixed term contracts can be concluded and the ones concluded within the temporary work assignments.’

The article quoted the executive director of the Applied Economics Group, Liviu Voinea, who claimed that ‘eliminating the number of renewals of the fixed term employment contracts contravened a European directive which required the existence of a maximum number of renewals in the national legislation.

The Bursa published on the front page a report on the ‘Deflated rally’. It was about the yesterday's rally yesterday at the foot of the People's House ‘against the Labour Code amendments by the Government, without the public debate’, the newspaper wrote.

The Curierul Naţional opened with an article entitled ‘Should social tax be reduced?’

‘Romania is a not a competitive country because it has excessive taxation, especially the one on the workforce. (...) When foreign investors come to Romania, the only thing that matters to them is the labor costs.’

‘The social insurance contributions should be significantly reduced in order to defrost the labor market (...) The consultants believe that only a few percent decrease in contributions will have the desired effects’, the above mentioned daily noted.

‘The government will consider reducing the social security contributions in the second half of this year, but this depends on the economy going, said last month Prime Minister Boc’, the newspaper recalled.

The Curierul Naţional quoted the financial advisers who said that ‘the current Tax Code is very difficult to read and especially to understand even for specialists.

Either the rules contravene the laws, either the laws were made ​​too difficult to understand. Furthermore, NAFA has serious problems with the VAT refund. If a taxpayer delayed paying his taxes, the penalties may even reach up to 34 percent per year, while the state pays nothing if delaying its payment to the traders.’

The Ziarul Financiar drew an alarm signal in the headline: ‘Monopoly on “Rabla” in Bucharest: out of 15 cars only two were scrapped in 2011, which had the same shareholder.’ For this reason we have already approached the Competition Council’, the newspaper quoted Cyprian Corn, general manager of the Capital West Remat.

Under the headline ‘What would you do if you were prime minister’, the Ziarul Financiar published today the opinion of Mihai Tudor, general manager of IBM South East Europe. He considered a priority to ‘remove the central control bodies of the state (from the Ministry of Finance, the NAFA, the customs) completely outside the political control and to focus the supervision activity in relevant areas as impact and with a high risk of fraud - an absolutely necessary measure to reduce the tax evasion.’

The Ziarul Financiar noted in another article: ‘Boc takes personal absorption of EU funds. ‘Yesterday Boc directly passed under the authority of the Ministry of Finance the institution coordinating the absorption of the European funds of 30 billion euros, in a surprise move. (...) The state through its institutions failed to attract all the money, a fact for which it is highly criticised. Romania has so far attracted only 1.9 billion euros of the structural funds made ​​available by the European Union.

Although the matter of the EU funds has been displayed each year as a source of financing of the economy, the authorities, whoever they had been, they were not able to spend the money. ‘It's hard to believe that only this change in the guardianship authority would produce the desired effects’, the newspaper quoted Emilian Duca, tax consultant.

‘There are firstly needed robust projects and secondly reducing the bureaucracy or at least rendering the existent bureaucracy transparent within this field.’

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