National Press Review, 5 April

‘Romania has the highest credit line drawn from the IMF, higher than the one in Greece’, the Gândul titres which, according to the information provided on the official website of the international institution, also features the risks induced by the borrowed money repayment, among which the daily mentions: domestic political tensions, a weaker recovery in Western European countries, which will discourage Romanian exports and the turmoil in the Euro Area, which would have a negative impact on foreign investment in Romania.

The document on the IMF’s website also informs that at least ten thousand state employees will be fired in the current year.

Romanian Government has further committed to the IMF to reduce wage bill, in order to fit into a deficit of 3 percent of next year’s GDP, to reduce by 5 700 the number of hospital beds and also reduce the number of free or compensated medicine, to increase tariffs for rail and subway rides, to privatize some state-owned companies and to reform energy and transport state-owned companies as well – the Gândul quotes from the cover letter recently sent by the Romanian Government to the IMF.

The Jurnalul Naţional publishes the results of a survey conducted by the Centre for Urban and Regional Sociology (CURS) on Romanians’ perception of crisis.

Therefore, two thirds of the interviewed (67 percent) claim that Romania will overcome the economic crisis in three years or more.

According to the same survey, 77 percent doubt that the actual Government will induce Romania’s economic recovery and only 13 percent share a different opinion.

The survey also shows that 71 percent of Romanians agree that people with high salaries should pay higher taxes, while 81 percent believe that the introduction of an additional will not improve the quality of medical services.

With regards to public trust in institutions, the first ranked is the town mayor with 46 percent of the votes and the next ranked are: the media with 42 percent, the police with 33 percent, trade unions with 12 percent, presidency with 11 percent, political parties with 7 percent, the Government with 6 percent, the Parliament with 5 percent. The CURS survey was conducted in March 2011, 1 104 people were interviewed and it has a margin of error of +/– 2.95 percent.

The România Liberă opens today’s edition with a map of the richest counties in Romania, where the main differentiating criteria were the GDP per capita, the total amount of wages and the unemployment rate.

The newspaper informs that only two Romanian counties were not affected by the economic crisis – Argeş and Cluj counties, while other five have managed to recover from the crisis: Braşov, Arad, Timiş, Constanţa and Sibiu.

However, Bucharest provides the most optimistic numbers, while Vaslui is place last according to almost all wealth indicators.

‘Teachers who won salary raises in court are about to lose up to 200 or 500 lei of their salaries, according to the new bill, which will standardize their salaries.

The new salary teacher law, over which the Government will assume responsibility before the Parliament, will establish the minimum and the maximum salary benchmarks for each university and pre-university teacher.

Wages of people in leading positions will also drop by 6-7 percent.

Minister of Environment Laszlo Borbely stated exclusively for the Gândul that he will meet the Dacia representatives today, in order to discuss upon the new bill that the Ministry is aimed at introducing, which will encourage electric cars manufacturers.

The minister also informed that the manufacturer Renault is interested in producing electric cars in Romania.

Translated by: Mihaela Grigoraş
MA Student, MTTLC, Bucharest University