Financial Press Review, 19 July

Today’s financial press presents several examples of our country’s potential that is being wasted.

The Ziarul Financiar quotes a GfK study revealing that ‘Romanians’ take on economy has improved, but remains pessimistic’.

The attitude of consumers in several EU countries has improved in the third quarter, ‘for the first time since the financial and economic crisis set in’, the Bursa reads.
Today’s Curierul Naţional opens with the headline ‘Agriculture, light years away from European standards’.

‘Romanian authorities are afraid to bet on agriculture’, the daily quotes National Union of Employers with Private Capital in Romania President, Costel Olteanu.
‘Romania has 0.6 hectares of arable land per inhabitant, highest rate in the EU’, a Ziarul Financiar headline reads.

‘But our country also has the most fragmented land in Europe, 53 percent of arable land is worked on farms smaller than ten hectares’.

In France only 3 percent of farms have under ten hectares.

Not accidentally, we are half as productive as Western Europe and have many semi-subsistence farms.

‘Romania will keep being vulnerable to fluctuations of produce prices as long as farmers will only produce enough for themselves’, Lucian Anghel, chief-economist at BCR stated at a conference on agriculture yesterday.

‘At a productivity similar to the euro zone, Romania could double its agricultural output and triple its exports, producing enough for around four Romanias’, the Curierul Naţional quotes a BCR study, entitled ‘Romania’s huge potential still waiting to be unlocked’.
Below the headline ‘Rabla Program for tractors, the Bursa reads: ‘European Commission has approved our country’s request for subsidies for the renewal of tractors and self-propelled agricultural machinery’.

The Ziarul Financiar prints an article entitled ‘Another 122 years until we are entirely piped up to the sewer system’.

Only 43.7 percent of Romanians are currently piped up to the sewer system, as compared to 78 percent in the Check Republic. Only 30.7 percent of Romanians are piped up to a sewer system with a cleaning plant.

80 percent of villages are not connected to the sewer system – ‘a matter of health and environment protection’, the Ziarul Financiar reads.

The same daily reads that ‘following the mediocre results of high school graduates, it was time for teachers to emphasize the situation of Romanian education: 32 percent of candidates failed’, almost double compared to 2008.

Several newspapers dedicate articles for the European Commission Report on justice, which will be published at Brussels on Wednesday.

‘The crooked are taken to court, but get off with prescription’, the Curierul Naţional reads.
‘Many of the court decisions regarding public procurement conflicts come too late’.

A Bursa headline reads ‘Exploring the Carpathian garden. Though the smokescreen of the hydropathic empire’, after visiting the Voineasa – Valea Latoriţei area.

Although ‘lately, two ministers, Elena Udrea and Cseke Atilla, have expressed optimism about hydropathic tourism, the situation discovered by the author, Dan Nicolaie, explains the headline.

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