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| THE WEEK IN REVIEW 18-24/01/2010 |
| (2010-01-22) |
| Last updated: 2010-01-25 14:53 EET |
A mission of the IMF, the World Bank and the European Commission has returned to Bucharest this week, for talks with the Romanian authorities on the pledges laid down in the stand by loan accord concluded with the afore-mentioned institutions last year. The head of the mission, Jeffrey Franks, is optimistic that Bucharest will receive the next two installments of the IMF loan, worth 2.3 billion Euros, even though the Romanian authorities failed to comply with all the commitments they had made. Romania is to receive one billion Euros from the European Commission and some 300 million Euros from the World Bank. The total value of the foreign aid package stands at some 20 billion Euros.
Trade unions and employers’ associations in Romania are trying to convince the government to maintain temporary unemployment in 2010, instead of resorting to the previously announced massive layoffs. They claim that this formula benefits both the employees, who get 75% of their salaries and keep their jobs, and the employers, who spend less on each employee’s contribution. It is also to the benefit of the state which would otherwise have to spend more on the unemployed. Trade unions fear unemployment might erupt in the coming months. 180 thousand employees in the private industrial sector and 20 thousand who work in joint ventures might be laid off on February 1st. They may be joined by tens of thousands of employees from various fields of activity such as education, social services, local administration and the national railways. Predictably, the trade unions have threatened with protests.
On Thursday the Romanian government signed an agreement with the European Bank for Investment, offering additional guarantees for the 400 million Euro loan that Ford Romania will sign with the aforementioned financial institution. Ford will use the money to develop production capacities at its factory in Craiova, south-western Romania, and to build a low carbon dioxide emission engine. Prime Minister Emil Boc said:
”Under this loan agreement, which is guaranteed by the Romanian government (80%) we hope to give a new impetus to the new Ford factory and the investment it makes in Romania. We continue to hope that through this investment we will see more jobs in Romania, a transfer of technology and obviously, the expansion of the company’s activity to reach the standards it is aiming at.“
The American car builder intends to invest some 1.2 billion Euros in Romania.
Another wave of snowfalls and storms has seriously upset road, railway, air and maritime traffic in Romania recently. The most affected areas have been the south, east and centre of the country. Tens of national and county roads have been closed down or blocked, many localities have been isolated while others have been left without electricity. Many trains and flights have been cancelled or delayed. The Black Sea ports have been closed temporarily. The bad weather will continue in the coming days, affecting the south, east and centre of the country. Temperatures will drop sharply during the night, from minus 15 degrees C to minus 25 ; the highs of the day will remain below zero.
The Belgian Herman van Rompuy, the first president of the European Council, visited Bucharest on Monday for the first time in his new capacity; he presented the priorities of his mandate and talked with the Romanian President Traian Basescu about the economic crisis and its effects. Rompuy underlined that his top priority was to ensure sustainable economic growth in the EU. In turn, Basescu said that Romania’s target was to join the euro zone by the end of 2014. The Romanian president also pleaded for the European aspirations of the ex-Soviet Republic of Moldova, which has a majority Romanian-speaking population:
“I wanted to inform the EC president that a major political objective for Romania was that the Republic of Moldova should be included in the group of countries from the Western Balkans, from the point of view of EU accession prospects. I also informed the EC president that the Republic of Moldova now needed positive signals and financial and political support”.
The two officials also talked about the community strategy regarding the Danube, the most important river of the Union, which links Germany to Romania via Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia and Bulgaria.
The Higher Defence Council of Romania meeting in its first session in 2010, decided to raise the number of Romanian troops operating in Afghanistan by 600 soldiers, the total number of Romanian military deployed in the region thus reaching 1800. The Higher Defence Council also decided that in 2010, 3753 Romanian soldiers should participate in foreign joint defence, peace-keeping, humanitarian and coalition-type missions in various parts of the world. Moreover, they also looked into the issue of strengthening the national civil capabilities in the field of crisis management. The Higher Defence Council also approved the re-organisation of the electric power production sector, by setting up two joint ventures.
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