Strategy goes to Brussels

(story to be published in tomorrow’s issue, March 15)

The Romanian Government will use the time left until Monday, March 20, when the medium-term economic Strategy is to be presented in Brussels, to obtain the accord of all partners, including through its signing a public statement. The text of the Strategy, which will have 40 pages, will include “only points of convergence, while divergence points are to make up files that will be discussed during the period March 20-May 15,” according to the Premier’s advisor on communication issues, Adrian Vasilescu. “The Premier has been in permanent contact with the party leaders, since Friday morning, and we have felt no opposition; by Saturday, when the document leaves for Brussels, the political statement will also be signed,” Vasilescu specified, declining however to comment on the delay in the Government’s sending the text by the original deadline of March 15. Social and political partners are to receive the final text of the Strategy this afternoon and they are to meet again tomorrow. Trade unions federations, BNS, Cartel Alfa, and CSDR, on Monday voiced their opposition to the privatisation of public utilities and proposed that this draft should be blocked for another ten years, so that market mechanisms should be regulated through the creation and development of regulation authorities and through the clarification of the regime of property. Premier Isarescu presented a “draft” of eight pages showing that the “privatisation process will continue well beyond year 2000, including regies autonomes as well. Revenues from privatisation are to reach their peak during the period 2000-2001 (1.9% of GDP) before they drop during the following years.”