Daniel Anghel (FIC Board Member) chaired the delegation of the
Coalition for Romania’s Development at the meeting with the Prime
Minister Nicolae Ciucă held on 20 September. Ramona Jurubita, FIC Vice
Presindet also joined the discussion. The main topics adressed were tax
reform, Romania’s accession to the Schengen Area, Structural Funds and
the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR). According to a press
release issued by the Government, the protection of vulnerable
consumers and of legal entity consumers, as well as risk security and
reforms were also among the topics debated on the same occasion.
The head of the International Monetary Fund, Kristalina Georgieva, has
warned about the lack of action on inflation, saying that there will be
"people on the street" globally unless steps are taken to protect the
most vulnerable from inflation. She has also added that central banks
around the world have "no choice" but to increase interest rates in an
effort to combat inflation. She has also explained that events that
have driven price increases, such as the Omicron variant of Covid-19
and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, have made inflation the people’s
biggest enemy.
Inflation and the growing costs, the lack of available workforce, the
lack of qualified personnel for key roles, supply chain problems and
the war in Ukraine are the biggest challenges for leaders when managing
a hybrid work environment, according to an online survey conducted by
BusinessMark. Moreover, 51% of respondents said the main problems
generated by remote work were leadership’s relationship with employees
and the lack of an evaluation system.
The premium that foreign investors are willing to pay to buy Romanian
foreign currency-denominated government bonds is rising compared to
transactions at the beginning of the year, and the bad news is that
benchmark interest rates are also growing following the change in
monetary philosophy by the ECB and the Federal Reserve. Romania
borrowed EUR 1.35 billion from external markets at the beginning of the
week, within the country’s fourth sale of foreign currency-denominated
government bonds on foreign markets since the start of 2022. Ministry
of Finance thus borrowed EUR 600 million over four years and EUR 750
million over seven years, and the yield the bonds were bought at is
expressed as mid swap rate (benchmark in the euro area) +2.45% (risk
premium) for four-year securities and with mid swap +4.05% for the
seven-year ones.
The US currency exceeded the RON 5 threshold on Thursday, 22 September,
the National Bank of Romania (NBR) having posted an exchange rate of
RON 5.01/USD 1, 0.68% above the level on Wednesday, while the euro
depreciated slightly, to RON 4.94/EUR 1. The dollar has appreciated 14%
against the Romanian currency since the beginning of 2022. The US
currency was exchanged for RON 4.37 on 3 January 2022. The dollar’s
appreciation had been visible since the morning of 22 September, when
the exchange rate exceeded RON 5/USD 1 on the interbank market, after
the US currency had reached a new record high of the past two decades
on international markets.
On Tuesday, 20 September, BCR and Cowork Timişoara inaugurated The
Office, a coworking space for technology companies located in the
headquarters of BCR’s county branch. The space developed by Cowork
Timişoara team with BCR and Amazon’s support was designed as a place of
meeting and collaboration, which aggregates the communities of tech
entrepreneurs and professionals.
Ministry of Finance reopened a bonds issue maturing in June 2026 and
borrowed RON 216 million from banks on Thursday, 22 September, below
the planned level of RON 400 million, at an annual interest rate of
8.3%. Total volume of demand had a nominal value of RON 376 million, of
which banks bid RON 375 million on their own behalf, while
non-competitive bids stood at RON 1.1 million.
Bobnet Group, which developed the Bob Concierge start-up, has opened a
plant to manufacture Internet of Things (IoT) devices for retail and
logistics in Pitești and will invest EUR 5-10 million over the next few
years to increase production. The company currently produces Bob
Concierge devices for the residential market. The IoT devices will
target the retail and logistics sector, including stores, restaurants
or warehouses.
Brand Management invested more than RON 500,000 in the modernization
and sustainability of the advertising infrastructure in 2021. The
company also recorded a significant increase in its campaign portfolio
in 2021 (87%). The advance was due both to the lifting of restrictions
associated with the pandemic and to the more mature brand promotion
habits. Telecom, fashion and jewellery clients are the pioneers of
indoor advertising, enjoying its benefits and remaining loyal to it.
More recently, large financial-banking or FMCG companies have also
become active on this segment, with 2-3 campaigns per quarter.
Galaţi City Hall continues the series of investments in healthcare
units with beds through two projects worth RON 12 million altogether,
VAT not included, namely "Resizing and reconfiguration of medical gas
networks - <<Sf. Ioan>> Children’s
Emergency Clinical Hospital in Galati - design and execution" and
"Increasing the capacity of <<Buna
Vestire>> Clinical Hospital of Obstetrics and Gynecology
to manage health crisis through investments in equipment using medical
fluids and works on electrical infrastructure". According to the press
release issued by Galaţi City Hall’s Press Office, the contracts for
the two projects have been signed and the public procurement contracts
have been put out to tender.
Government has approved the possibility for public institutions to work
together through administrative consortia. The draft law will allow
municipalities to apply for financing together and to exchange
specialists within joint works. There were several collaborations
between municipalities in the past, but only some of them were
successful. Previous partnerships were based on cooperation protocols
that could be terminated at any time.
The Special Parliamentary Committee in charge of Justice Laws started
debates on draft law regarding judges and prosecutors’ statute on
Thursday, 22 September. Save Romania Union (USR) MP Stelian Ion
requested that debates on the draft law should be suspended in order to
wait for Venice Commission’s opinion, but his proposal was rejected.
The chairman of the Special Parliamentary Committee, Gabriel
Andronache, replied that there was a regulatory deadline for the
debates and if that was exceeded, the draft law would be tacitly
adopted, which should be avoided.
Government has adopted an emergency ordinance (OUG) amending and
completing National Education Law 1/2011. The normative act creates the
legislative framework necessary for extending dual vocational education
at university level. Moreover, higher education institutions will be
able to set up, by themselves or by association, companies,
foundations, associations, pre-university education units, consortia
for dual education, with the university senate’s approval, in
accordance with legal provisions in force. The condition for their
establishment is that they should contribute to improving the
institution’s performance.
One legislative proposal at a time, the European Commission is trying
to build its economic resilience and reinforce the EU’s economic
sovereignty. But to increase the EU’s leverage on the global stage,
power relations between public and private interests within the EU will
have to shift as well. On Monday, the Commission finally presented its
proposal for the Single Market Emergency Tool (SMEI) that should allow
the Commission to identify critical products and sectors, request
information from companies in these sectors, and, in emergencies,
reprioritize their orders.
Romania’s population will decrease by 15.5% by 2050. Romania thus ranks
11th in a global top of population decline, according to United Nations
data, centralized by the investor content platform Visual Capitalist.
The ranking of countries that will face significant population declines
is led by Bulgaria (which will face a 22.5% drop in population by
2050), Lithuania (-22.1%), Latvia (-21.6%), Ukraine (-19.5%) and Serbia
(-18.9%).
Almost a quarter (23.6%) of all self-employed people aged 18 and over
in the European Union were at risk of poverty and social exclusion in
2021, according to data published by the European Union’s statistical
office (Eurostat) on Thursday, 22 September. At national level, in
2021, Romania recorded the highest share of self-employed people at
risk of poverty and social exclusion in the community bloc, of 70.8%,
having also experienced the biggest increase from 2020 to 2021, of
5.1%.