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| THE WEEK IN REVIEW 23-29/03/2009 |
| (2009-03-27) |
| Last updated: 2009-03-31 9:26 EET |
After close to two weeks of talks with Romanian officials, representatives of several international financial institutions said they would give a loan to Romania to help it through the global economic crisis. Most of the money, 12.95 billion out of the total 20 billion Euros, will be supplied by the International Monetary Fund, with another 5 billion coming from the EU, one billion from the World Bank and one billion from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and other financial institutions. According to Prime Minister Emil Boc, the goal is to boost the Romanian economy:
“We also want this loan agreement to help Romanians keep their jobs and repay their loans by supporting a reasonable and balanced exchange rate against the Euro, to help re-launch crediting in Romania and, implicitly, to support the business environment and economic operations. Indirectly, but equally important, we want this loan to enable us to continue salary and pension payments. We are looking for solutions to fund salary increases for low-income categories, so as to offset the effects of a growing inflation. We also want people with low pensions to have a guaranteed income able to sustain a decent standard of living.”
But not all Romanians are happy with the IMF loans, primarily because of the economic and social consequences of the austerity measures entailed by such an arrangement. These measures include a reduction of governmental spending and the ratio of fringe benefits in the total salaries, as well as a reform of the public pension system. Under these circumstances, Romania might be facing social unrest this spring. The authorities’ plans to restructure the railway transport system, which might leave 12 thousand people jobless, prompted unions in the sector to announce protests in the first week of April, with over 10 thousand people expected to take part.
They accuse the government of spending money to rescue private companies, while paying no similar attention to state-owned corporations. On the other hand, concerns over foreign banks being tempted to withdraw their funding for subsidiaries in Romania were disproved. To make sure that this will not happen, IMF officials on Thursday had a meeting in Vienna with decision-makers in the nine parent-banks of the main financial institutions in Romania, which undertook not to withdraw capital from their Romanian subsidiaries, but to increase their funding instead.
An unprecedented scandal has rocked the Romanian interior ministry. Further to an investigation initiated by the National Anti-Corruption Directorate, the ministry’s secret service, the Directorate General for Intelligence and Internal Protection, was beheaded and might be dismantled altogether. Cornel Serban, who had been appointed chief of this directorate only ten days earlier, resigned over the investigation. The National Anti-Corruption Directorate has prosecuted Serban, along with Petre Pitcovici, chief of the Operations Division in the same ministry’s Directorate General Anti-corruption.
The two are charged with abetting an ill-doer. They allegedly dissuaded an anti-corruption prosecutor from ordering the commencement of prosecution in an investigation into a fishy real estate deal involving a powerful businessman, Gabriel Popoviciu, and a former rector of the University of Agronomy in Bucharest, Ioan Alecu. The scandal ripples through several political parties and politicians, reaching the head of state as well, who denied any involvement in the affair.
A group of Romanian writers and historians, who were trying to enter the ex-Soviet, mostly Romanian-speaking Republic of Moldova to celebrate 91 years since the union of Bassarabia with Romania, was told to go back by the Moldovan border authorities. On March 27th, 1918, the National Assembly in Chisinau endorsed the union of this province with the Kingdom of Romania. At the time, Moldavia, although with a mostly Romanian-speaking population, was part of the Tsarist Empire. In 1940, Moscow reclaimed the province, in an ultimatum, and today the territory is split between the former Soviet Republic of Moldova and Ukraine.
This week’s incident comes shortly after Moldovan border police denied access to Moldova of two local delegations from eastern Romania, which were scheduled to take part in a meeting of the European Region Siret – Prut – Dniester, and two Romanians were expelled from this country by the authorities in Chisinau. The two were in the Moldovan capital city to provide assistance to the Liberal Democratic Party, one of the parties taking part in the parliamentary election due on April the 5th. The Romanian-born American analyst Vladimir Socor, quoted by the media in Bucharest, says that, with such absurd and abusive measures, “authorities in Chisinau waste time and credibility, only to reach their temporary electoral goals of winning over the pro-Russian electorate.”
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