Where should the money from the IMF go?

Unfreezing financing, creating and keeping jobs and supporting the local business – these are among the main uses the money borrowed from the IMF should be put to, say some of the most important Romanian entrepreneurs polled by ZF.

“If 4-5% of the major Romanian companies alone collapse, the entire economy will be frozen, as it happened in the banking system,” believes Viorel Micula, who together with his brother Ioan Micula, owns the European Food & Drinks group, the biggest Romanian producer in the foods industry. Micula runs a group with business put at one billion euros and with more than 8,000 employees, according to the latest available data. Other Romanian entrepreneurs, such as Ioan Niculae, the owner of Interagro, and Ilie Carabulea, the shareholder of Banca Carpatica and of Atlassib transport company, which employ thousands of people, believes that limiting layoffs and creating new jobs should be a priority for the government in the current economic context. Romania concluded the agreement with the IMF on March 25, whereby the Fund, the European Commission, the World Bank and the EBRD will lend it almost 20 billion euros, the biggest loan in the country’s history. The business sector, however, expects this money to go to the real economy, although for many local businesspeople, the “foreign loan does not save, but shields Romania from the crisis,” as Petre Szel, chairman of Muntenia Invest, which manages SIF Muntenia, puts it.