Financial Press Review, February 14

Today’s Ziarul Financiar opens with the headline ‘We have always had money. Things didn’t move along because of a lack of interest, knowledge or will’.

This statement belongs to Anca Boagiu Minister of Transport. ‘From 2002 until present day, the ministry had a 20 billion euro budget. Where did this money go?’

The Ziarul Financiar prints an article entitled ‘Romania pumps new 1 billion euro loans monthly in order to operate. How long?’ ‘Since the state has been borrowing intensely, public debt has reached a new highest: 46 billion euro.’

‘These past years annual public debt has been increasing, it has not fell below 30 percent. One problem – the daily reads – is that ‘money is being pumped mostly in current pays with pensions and salaries, while investment is scarce’.

The statement of the week from Capital magazine belongs to Florin Pogonaru, President of the Businessmen’s Association of Romania: ‘You could bring ten IMFs, if you only appoint people on political criteria and not on their achievements.’
Under the headline ‘Operation cigarette put out in the Prut’, the Săptămâna Financiară reads that ‘although responsible for one third of the cigarette smuggling in Romania, the border with the Republic of Moldova was ignored by the National Anticorruption Directorate’.

‘One out of four cigarettes smoked in Romania comes from smuggling.’ ‘It’s impossible to build a market of tens of millions of packs by carrying them in boxes, as investigators claim.

’The magazine reminds that in January 2011 the law that required all trucks be searched was recalled, and replaced with a provision that only 1-3 percent should be searched, based on a risk analysis.

‘Is it more expensive to prevent?’ George Butunoiu, HR specialist wonders in Capital magazine.

‘Typical Romanian leaders: government members believe we are all uncaught criminals, and, as a consequence, instead of punishing a few thousands or tens of thousands of real criminals, they make millions of potential criminals pay. That is, everyone’, the author writes, referring to the stamps on cigarette packs and alcohol bottles.

‘If five of the many that rig elections were apprehended, election fraud would instantly disappear and millions would be saved at the Chambers’, Capital reads. The same weekly dedicates an article to the state of the Romanian agriculture, ‘still in bits and inefficient’. ‘Countless small time farms, low subsidies and inefficiency are the main problems of agriculture, which affect food prices directly.’

The Curierul Naţional opens with an article entitled ‘Civil servants salaries not raised too soon’. ‘The Government has promised IMF that salary increase will be limited in 2012.’

‘The derogations will start at the end on the year, around elections, because Romania has not rid itself of electoral charity yet.’

Under the headline ‘Bucharest pushes Georgia, Azerbaijan and Hungary for the Caspian gas project, AGRI’, the Ziarul Financiar reads that ‘the investment is between 1.2 and 4.5 billion euro, way below that of projects like South Stream or Nabucco, worth 25 billion euro and 8 billion respectively.

Moreover, this project could take less to build, market specialists claim that the investment might be ready three years in three years (…) Although it is backed politically, the AGRI project has vulnerabilities. The first is financing (…) Another problem might be large size ships coming and going in the Black See through the Bosporus’, the Ziarul Financiar mentions.

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