Financial Press Review, November 26

Under the headline ‘Stock market anniversary, same promises’, the daily Ziarul Financiar reads: ’Yesterday’s 15 year anniversary of modern stock market held at the NBR offered high officials the venue to clear the score with politicians and the media, as usual, the capital market is but a minor subject on the authorities’ agenda. Promises to quote state-owned companies were yet again delivered’.

The daily Ziarul Financiar reads: ‘After 15 years, stock market sheets not at all satisfactory.’ ‘With only two major listings in the past five years, as compared to double digit quotes in Poland; only three million euros a day, as compared to 300 million euros in Poland) and a few thousand investors. The Bucharest Stock Market is far from being the financier in a 125 billion Euro economy’.

‘Unlike Poland, our Government didn’t manage to raise money from selling companies to private buyers and didn’t manage to break the banks’ monopoly by trading state bonds on the stock market. Thus, it ended up borrowing 18 billion euros from the IMF and other international institutions’.

On the same subject, the daily Bursa prints, quoting NBR Governor, Mugur Isărescu: ‘In order to become the economy’s barometer, the Stock Market has to be a viable alternative to bank financing. For that, the Stock Market has to promote financial discipline, credibility and transparency.

‘Message to a teenage Stock Market,’ prints the daily Curierul Naţional.

The first page of the daily Ziarul Financiar reads: ‘Major doubts about the PM’s promise. The 15 percent increase of public servants’ salaries is costing the state 1.4 billion euros’.

‘Sources from the Ministry of Finance claim that a 15 percent salary boost is possible only by major layoffs in 2011, more than the 15 000 announced,’ the newspaper reads.

According to President Traian Băsescu – the newspaper reads in an article – at the end of September there were 64 000 less employees than last year.

‘Data from the National Institute of Statistics show that less than 30 000 civil servants were laid off this year. Hence, it is unclear how many civil servants are still in the system and how many were laid off’.

The daily Ziarul Financiar mentions that ‘the unemployment rate has been dropping in the past months’ and ‘this year, only one out of five layoffs were in the public sector’.

The headline of the article: ‘Complete chaos at the Government: where did the 64 000 laid off workers disappear?’

‘The difficulty to understand and analyze the restructuring process that the administrative apparatus is going through springs from figures and data that are spat out without documents to prove them or clear figures that have been assumed by state institutions,’ the daily Ziarul Financiar claims.

The same daily prints an article entitled ‘A story of 1.3 billion euros worth of bonds: tension, preparations, confusing declarations and, in the end, 4.8 percent interest’.

‘In a wave of statements and foreign and internal signals concerning Romania’s vulnerabilities – placed on the same list as Greece or Hungary – the Ministry of Finance borrowed 1.3 billion euros yesterday, by issuing state bonds with a three year maturity on the domestic market, at a yield of 4.8 percent’.

‘Yesterday, during a public statement, the NBR governor accused the media again, especially TV stations, of ‘wearing off’ the IMF chief’s statement on the risk the Romania should go into default,’ the daily Ziarul Financiar reads.

‘There is no danger that Romania should freeze external payments,’ the daily Bursa quotes the NBR governor, Mugur Isărescu.

In this context, the daily Economistul asked for the opinion of the head of the Businessmen’s Association of Romania.

‘In order not to leave room for wrongful interpretations,’ Florin Pogonaru said, ‘this domain requires complete transparency.

It is imperative that the population be informed about the maturity dates of the loans and sources that are to be used in order to pay off the debt. Without such information, there is much room for erroneous evaluations and fear, which are bad for the economy.

As a consequence, a fit reaction to the above mentioned statements is to inform the public correctly and completely about how these obligations that have increased public debt will be fulfilled.’

Translated by Gabriela Lungu and Tudor-Alexandru Ciocănel
MA Students, MTTLC, Bucharest University