Financial Press Review, January 24

The Ziarul Financiar opens with an interview with Mişu Negriţoiu, general manager of the ING Bank, article entitled "Present day Romania is the failure of 90"s political generation," generation that is still governing.

"We're back where we started: from basic policies to the quality of the government, we are at the beginning of the 90's, when at least we had the excuse that we didn't know much.

We are now actually more vulnerable than before joining the EU, because we've shown that we can make the same mistakes twice. (…)

That is how we ended up the EU member state that is still working with the World Bank in basic economic restructuring programs," Mişu Negriţoiu says.

"After 20 years the economy still isn't stable. (…) We need to improve the quality of governing, otherwise nobody will talk to us.

The inconsistent economic policies will be our handicap, and this will probably also cost us in the negotiations for adopting the euro: how much can such a fickle system be trusted?" the ING Bank general manager concludes.

The Ziarul Financiar prints an article under the headline "Statistical truth of special Interior pensions, army and protection: 3.5 percent of pensions eat up 10 percent of the pension budget."

In another article headlined "Why some are more special than others pension-wise," the aforementioned daily reads: "No doubt, in a normal country there must be an organism that regulates the acts of the Government. And usually that is the Parliament.

How come Justice has to vote almost all the Government's acts? When will this end? (…) It probably will when the Government doesn't have any money left," the daily quotes Constitutional Law teacher Ioan Stanomir.

All the dailies comment on the "Fondul Proprietatea Listing at the Bucharest Stock Exchange," the Bursa even dedicates a supplement to tomorrow's event, "which we have looked forward to for over five years."

"Who are the suitors? Major foreign investment funds, which will finally have a worthy Romanian company to invest in, local pension funds, which need "fresh meat," but also all local investors.

"Investing in Fondul Proprietatea can bring up to 60 percent profit in 2011, according to estimations," the Capital reads.

The Curierul Naţional opens with the headline "The real figures of Romanian real estate."
"Prices have reached the level of 2006 and will continue to plummet, the Government"s attempt to resuscitate them with the First House Programme has failed," the daily considers.

"A third version of the programme is expected," reads the article that also mentions the main adjustments of the programme "The First House 3."

The Curierul Naţional prints an article entitled "The inevitable has happened: real estate projects are now on the market," which reads: "Selling the real estate projects in insolvency should have started a while ago. (…)

Still, it is a good thing that unfinished real estate projects are being sold and other investors can come to Romania and continue them.

This is the first step towards modern economy and unlocking credits.

Banks need to ask for their money back so we will see more and more real estate sharks being sued," the daily prints.

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