Financial Press Review, 26 May

The financial press noted the NBR Governor intervention yesterday at a colloquium on the financial issues warning used as the title of the Ziarul Financiar: ‘Large capitals are coming and we have to pay attention to the exchange rate.’

‘The NBR will try to mitigate the volatility of the exchange rate as Romania could face foreign capital inflows that might lead to the currency’s appreciation, but it is possible that a central bank compete with the foreign markets alone’, Mugur Isărescu said.

‘We must avoid the mistake of 2006-2008, when the budgetary expenditures were increased on the basis of some exceptional incomes arising amid the overheated economy’, the Curierul Naţional quoted the head of the central bank in the opening article published under the title ‘Who is responsible for future growth?’.

‘If the economy rises, the state must maintain the spending to sustainable levels.

Let us not get drunk with cold water.’

‘The structural reforms are essential’, the Bursa also noted, in an article entitled’ Romania was on the brink of economic heart attack in 2009.’

This statement was also made by Mugur Isărescu.

The Bursa quoted from one of Adrian Vasilescu’s statements, adviser to the NBR governor in the heading ‘We are admirably unprepared for euro accession, but delay is not a solution.’

Inside the column ‘Politics and Economy’, the Bursa published an article titled ‘Case “The Seaport”: 29 days each for 29 defendants.’

It was about the defendants of the Mironescu group, named after the former Secretary General of the Ministry of Administration and Interior, which received arrest warrants.

‘The peak of crime - the prosecutors (also) said that the group members took money even for the customs processing of goods brought into Romania legally, with all the necessary documents’, the Bursa revealed.

The same newspaper commented upon the Transparency International Romania report in an article entitled ‘Public integrity climate was seriously damaged.’

‘Our country begins to look like servile state regarding the corruption.’

The report referred to what he called ‘the climate of legislative incoherence’, ‘the procedural improvisations when adopting fundamental laws’, ‘the repeated, flagrant and noxious abuse of the government’s procedure of assuming responsibility for the adoption of bills.’

According to the report, ‘the anti-corruption measures were rather ostensible and had propagandistic feature’, the Bursa noted.

Under the title ‘Kings of asphalt took one step back’, the Ziarul Financiar reported that the four constructors of the Moara Vlăsiei-Ploieşti motorway dropped supplementing the construction contract by 47 percent, meaning the equivalent of 110 million euros, so that they do to not lose the job.

‘This is the first time the Ministry of Transport managed to put its foot down concerning such a large contract and to persuade the workers to work without any other addenda’, the newspaper commented.


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