Financial Press Review, 24 June

The risks of the crisis in Greece, the top of the richest ministers, the amount of interest for the Petrom shares, the blocked bank accounts by the National Agency for Fiscal Administration (NAFA) and the state of the sugar industry were the topics included in the economic press review.

The daily Bursa opened with an article entitled ‘Sovereign debt became toxic assets’ in which we read:

‘The crisis in Greece could exceed the European barriers and expand globally, as shown by the pulled warning signs of both the European and American officials.’

Under the heading formulated as a question ‘Withdrawal of Greek banks, risk for Romania?’ the Curierul Naţional responded that ‘at least for now, there is no reason to fear.’

‘Greece’s lesson was that every euro unsustainable debt today is a minus for tomorrow’s growth,’ the Ziarul Financiar wrote under the title ‘Country betrayal means covering it in debts.’

In our country, ‘everything is politicized 100 percent, each individual is someone’s man and the graduates of 25 years were appointed to boards of national companies just because their fathers were presidents of county councils. (...) All these are settled by the debts.’

The Ziarul Financiar opened with the title ‘Romanian billionaires face to face with Petrom offer’, the largest stock offering in the Stock history at Bucharest. In Romania there are over 100 billionaires, but only one of them showed interest in the Petrom offer.

‘An investment of this kind cannot be made due to patriotism. The market should be left to have its say,’ the businessman told the newspaper.

The Ziarul Financiar published on the front-page ‘The richest ministers of Boc government.’

The estimate was based on an assessment of property and assets owned by them, of which the low value has been reported for each debt.

It resulted that ‘the richest cabinet officials are Gabriel Oprea Boc, Minister of Defence and Elena Udrea, Minister of Regional Development and Tourism, with fortunes of over 2 million each, at least 20 times higher than their head, Prime Minister Emil Boc.’

Under the heading ‘NAFA already blocked over one million accounts,’ the Curierul Naţional showed that it ‘took off’ the phenomenon of the blocked bank accounts by NAFA so that the taxpayers can recover their debts from taxes.

‘Only in the first five months of 2011, NAFA blocked more than 1 million bank accounts, by 10 percent more than during the same period last year. Instead, the amounts seized were 15 percent lower, according to the figures from NAFA.’

The Ziarul Financiar published an article entitled ‘Sugar industry left with fewer factories: in just one year the price of sugar almost doubled.’

‘In the 90s, in Romania there were 33 sugar factories and at the end of 2009 there were only nine (...) one of which - Zahărul Bod (sugar factory) - went into insolvency earlier this year, but continued its activity.’

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