Financial Press Review, June 15

Today’s financial dailies address the economic situation, increasing unemployment rate and European funds absorption.

Below a headline that reads ‘Slim Chances for Recession Return, NBR Claims’, the Ziarul Financiar prints an article ‘apart from the lack of sustainable economic growth, the main macroeconomic problem is high inflation, which resulted from last year’s VAT increase’.

The daily quotes Cristian Popa, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank.

The Bursa prints an interview with financial consultant Aurelian Dochia, with the headline ‘Situation in Greece May Affect Economic Growth in Romania’.

‘The situation in Greece will increase financing costs in Europe; banks and states will have to pay higher interest rates to attract funds’.

‘The first domestic danger is going to be the 2012 elections’, Aurelian Dochia says.

‘If public spending continues to be streamlined and more and more efficient, there is a chance that taxes will increase sometime in the future’.

Below the headline ‘No European Fund Payment for Transportation in May’, the Ziarul Financiar shows that the past three months have been this year’s worst when it comes to fund absorption for infrastructure.

‘Between 2007 and 2013 Romania has access to 4.5 billion Euro worth of European funds for infrastructure, but at the end of May the Ministry of Transport had only managed to use 120 million Euro, that is 2.6 percent of the entire amount’.

‘Transport says that payments start now. Even so, the Sectoral Operational Programme (POS) Transport has made the fewest payments from the seven programs that Romania uses to attract European funding’.

The Curierul Naţional opens with an article entitled ‘How Will Reorganization Affect Us?’

Among others, the dialy quotes Laurenţiu Pleosceanu, President of the Romanian Association of Construction Entrepreneurs, who ‘does not believe that territorial organization will necessarily increase fund absorption rates, and that those running the territories will have to be very professional and capable to do so’.

‘The Liberal Democrat Party insists on 8 regions, while the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania wants 16’, the Curierul Naţional reads. The Bursa addresses this difference of opinion in an article entitled ‘Reorganization Effects: If Counties Get Bigger, Coalition Gets Smaller’.

‘We believe there are insufficient arguments for 8 giant counties’, the Bursa and the Curierul Naţional quote Kelemen Hunor, Democratic Alliance of Hugarians in Romania Leader.

Below the headline ‘Over A Million Romanians Have Part-Time Jobs – Highest Level In Five Years’, the Ziarul Financiar reads that the one million threshold has been exceeded for the first time in five years, when the first official statistics are dated.

There are more part-time workers, but 151 000 less full-time workers between December 2009 and December 2010.

Most Romanians that have such contracts are not employees, the daily points out.

‘Most employees who were laid off took refuge in agriculture’, where the population percentage exceeded 30 percent last year.


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