Financial Press Review, 19 April

From the pages of the Curierului Naţional we learnt that until June the Ministry of Transport intended to contract works of nearly 3.3 billion euros, both for road and railway infrastructure, according to the Secretary of State Alexandru Nazare.

Of the total amount, about 1 billion euros represented the four sections of motorway, for which there had been appointed constructors, but no contracts have been signed yet.

Thus, the auctions for the harbours Nadlac-Arad, Timisoara, Lugoj, Lugoj-Deva and Drastic-Sibiu on the fourth European transport corridor were in the appeals period.

The Ziarul Financiar revealed the fact that housing prices of five of the largest residential complexes in the Capital decreased in lei with only 2-3 percent over the past three years despite the recession that has led to blocking the transactions.

In euros, the developers have reduced their prices by 15-17 percent, but the depreciation of the leu-euro exchange rate by around 13 percent thus annulled the discounts operated by real estate investors.

The same paper stated that the number of cars older than ten years which could be discarded this year under the “Rabla” campaign, would climb up to 130,000 units compared to the 60,000 that have been approved so far.

As for the pollution tax, according to the environment minister, it was unlikely to be altered provided that it has been drafted in collaboration with the European Commission, while the decision of the European Court of Justice of two weeks ago, which has questioned the legality of the tax, referred to an emergency ordinance of 2008.

The newspaper Bursa announced that the month of March arrived with good news for those who do not consume food or energy.

The price index, which does not include the regulated prices, increased by only 0.2 percent from the previous month and the annual increase was of 5.7 percent.

The same paper informed us that our country had competitive and geographical advantages and that it could become, through the port of Constanta, one of the major trade routes of the future, but it needs to improve the infrastructure and implementation of essential legislative changes, such as, among others, deferring the payment of the VAT on imports for all companies, regardless of the amount of imports, it was shown in a recent report by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The Economistul pointed out that obtaining or grating a loan can be an extremely difficult demarche.

Thus, any SME in need of a loan, which does not have its own liabilities as required by the bank, may request the securities the National Credit Guarantee Fund for SMEs, which will be able to cover the loans or the letters of credit granted by 30 of the major commercial banks in Romania.


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