Financial Press Review, 30 June

Increasing trust in the Romanian economy, signs of credit revival and administrative efficiency, which depends on the quality of employment, are just some of today’s topics.

The Bursa and the Ziarul Financiar both read: ‘People and companies trust the economy a bit more than in June’, while at European level it has slightly decreased, according to a survey carried out monthly by the Commission in Brussels.

All the dailies address NBR’s decision to keep the interest rate at 6.25 percent for the nineth consecutive session, as well as the existing level of minimum reserve requirements.

The NBR notices ‘first signs’ of credit revival, associated with lower interest rates imposed by banks for loans and deposits, but also with the lack of consumption revival, the Ziarul Financiar reads.

The Curierul Naţional also addresses this subject, opening today’s issue with the headline ‘A Year of Mistreat for Suckers that Save Up’.

June will be ‘the twelfth month in a row that the reference rate is below inflation rate’.

‘Depositors realised that the value of the money they have kept in the bank has diminished instead of increasing. There is no encouragement to save up, because you end up losing money’.

Among others, the daily quotes financial consultant Bogdan Baltazar, who believes that

‘Romania’s dependency on foreign financing is the result of a policy that doesn’t encourage setting resources in motion’.

Bogdan Baltazar also claims that ‘the blame for the inflation side-slip should be cast on political factors, and not on the National Bank of Romania’.

The Ziarul Financiar dedicates a long article ‘to the web of government agencies that are stifling the local administration’, as the President Traian Băsescu put it on Monday in Parliament.

There are currently 41 types of institutions – offices, directorates, commissariats, sports complexes or clubs – which offer services in territorial units in the name of the central authority.

There are 1451 such institutions, which ‘offer services outside local authority – City Halls, County, Municipal or Local Councils.

‘For years, their management is decided on political grounds; this happens in all state institutions, be them government agencies or state-owned companies’.

‘Administrative spending amounts to over 25 percent of the GDP, which puts Romania in the same situation as Greece, Spain or Portugal’. There is no other option: ‘we must cut spending’, the Ziarul Financiar reads.

Only, ‘layoffs are not the only way to reduce costs’, the daily quotes Liviu Voinea from the Group of Applied Economy.

‘We need to focus on quality employment, efficiency is not achieved through staff layoffs only’.

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