Financial Press Review, 28 March

Under the front page’s headline ‘Romania has reached minimum of employees in last 50 years’. The Ziarul Financiar, however, revealed that ‘the unemployment has been declining for ten consecutive months.’ ‘The bottom line: the employees switch to the illegal work or leave the country.’ ‘Currently there are two times less legal employees than in 1990.’

The number of the illegal working employees, fundamentally impossible to quantify, was estimated between 1 and 1.7 million. ‘The abolishment of the illegal work could bring an income of at least 6 billion euros to the budget’, the Ziarul Financiar said.

The Curierul Naţional opened with an article entitled ‘Will health system survive until next year?’ The question emerged in a context where ‘our country allocated the smallest EU funds to the health system, fewer than 4 percent of the GDP’, the newspaper wrote.

‘The lack of some drastic measures will lead to the system’s collapse in less than a year.’ According to some, ‘the health care system is already in collapse’. ‘There is no money for medicines or medical equipment, as the money allocated only covers the salaries of the hospital staff’, Eduard Dobre, chief executive of Palmed Group, stated. ‘In Romania, there was little money collected because there were very few ensures. Additional sources must be found.’ ‘The population ages and the state can not ensure a good health status for its citizens’, we also read in the Curierul Naţional.

The weekly the Economistul wrote hat ‘a worrying phenomenon that should concern us even more is that of the aging of the population. In our country, due to the lower birth rates’ one in five people enter the age group that we call the elders.’ ‘The decrease of fertility is a process with a large impact on the labour market.’

The phenomenon is aggravated by the high levels of infant mortality: a rate of 12.2 per thousand living newborns in January 2011, the Economistul revealed.

In another article the named weekly mentioned a harsh report sent to the Bucharest Parliament by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. The official report of the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) stated among others ‘the inconclusive way in which the bribe and the lobbyism are incriminated, as there are many loopholes through which the perpetrators can save one's face, did not (...) The Group did no less than 20 recommendations to improve the legislation in the stated fields. What will be the Bucharest’s response? For now we have to do with a lack of response’, the Economistul noted.

Under the headline ‘New promises: 500 million euros attracted from EU in 2011’, the Ziarul Financiar published the findings of a seminar on the infrastructure topic which took place yesterday with the participation of the Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Anca Boagiu. ‘The lack of accountability and professionalism at the central and local public administration level so far has delayed the absorption of EU funds. ‘So far, the shipments have attracted 4 percent of available European funds, the equivalent of 113 million euros.’ ‘Minister Anca Boagiu has once again assumed the commitment that by 2013 Romania will have around 800 km of highways, compared to the current 314.’

The Curierul Naţional recalled the announcement on the closure of the 1,000 kilometers railway no longer run by any train and the rent of 4,000 kilometers of other private operators. (...) According to the minister, the state railway companies have accumulated over the past 10 years debts equivalent to 1 percent of the GDP, and the decision to close or lease the railways will reduce the maintenance costs of the CFR SA, the newspaper wrote.

The daily Bursa published an article entitled ‘Football and money.’ National team ruined players’ rank.’ ‘Given the lack of results, more and more footballers seriously considered to withdraw from the national team. First, the footballers evolving in best European clubs feared they might definitively ruin their ranks because of the national’s team counters’, which drew the fall of the first representative in the FIFA and UEFA rankings, the newspaper revealed.


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