Financial Press Review, 31 May

The Greek crisis impact on Romania, the need to respect the law of fiscal responsibility and the prospects of recycling materials were some of the topics covered in the economic press.

‘The evolution of Greece's public debt crisis is followed with high interest in Romania, where Greek banks have the largest operations outside their country’, the Ziarul Financiar writee.

‘The Greeks focused 17 percent of the local banking system assets and had deposits drawn from Romania of around 6 billion euros.’

Under the heading ‘Greeks do not have money to buy the remaining 46 percent of Romtelecom’, the Ziarul Financiar reports that the Greek Group OTE announced yesterday that they refused the offer made ​​by the Romanian state in November 2010.

‘It is unclear whether the state is going to sale the remaining 46 percent of the shares to other investors or is going to put it on the stock market’, the newspaper noted.

The article quotes the opinion of the PNL Deputy Relu Fenechiu, according to whom the state should not sell anything while the market is down.

The Curierul Naţional writes that the Greeks considered the moment chosen by the Romanian authorities as inappropriate for the acquisition of the remaining shares in Romtelecom.

The Bursa publishes an article entitled ‘Government does not keep the law of fiscal responsibility.’

The opinion belonged to the Association of Businessmen in Romania, which required the Executive to forward to Parliament the fiscal strategy draft for the next three years (2012-2014).

’We have observed that both the Government and the Parliament members, whether supporting the Government or the Opposition, showed an inadmissible indifference towards keeping a law, promulgated in fact under the pressure of the IMF, which would democratically limit, by being validated by the Parliament any excess or populism generated by the upcoming elections in 2012’, the Curierul Naţional quotes from a statement of the Association of Businessmen.

Under the heading ‘One minister for environment and forests', the same newspaper publishes an interview with Laszlo Borbely.

When asked about the projects led by his ministry in order to increase recycling, the minister answered:

‘Currently, very little waste is recycled because recycling is much more expensive than storage. Given this, we also need to take important decisions in order to avoid being flooded by garbage.’

’In all European countries there is a fee that is charged for the waste disposal. We also need to establish such a fee, as it would automatically encourage the recycling.’

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