The main goal of Romania over the next few years needs to be completing reforms started and left unfinished, such as the fiscal reform, the privatisations of the state-run companies and the property reform, presidential advisor Theodor Stolojan said during the “Romania 2010. Our business plan for the next five years,” organised by ZIARUL FINANCIAR.
In case of the fiscal reform, Stolojan believes the real unification of the flat tax was delayed a great deal, and the business environment still has no overall picture of how this domain will look in 2007.
The privatisation of the state-run companies is yet another field that needs quick solutions. “The Romanian state still holds shares and interests in over 1,200 companies,” the presidential advisor said, quoting the monitoring report of the European Commission published earlier in the week. The withdrawal of the state from the economy by the completion of privatisation will improve the business environment. Stolojan went on to specify that Romania was among the top 10 countries in terms of business environment improvement, in a ranking put together by World Bank experts.
National Bank of Romania Governor Mugur Isarescu expects the job of the central bank to grow increasingly difficult over the next few years. Until the shift to the European currency, which could occur in 2012 at the earliest, NBR has to make sure the disinflation continues, without affecting the economic growth, while salaries and non-governmental lending will witness significant increases.
On the other hand, the NBR governor points out that the fiscal and wage policies need to be in synch with the monetary policy. The budgetary spending, even the spending directed at infrastructure, initially influences aggregate demand, thus fuelling inflationary pressures.
“I only expect a constant lending expansion,” Isarescu says, anticipating that commercial banks will take advantage of the increase in salaries, which influences the borrowing capacity of customers that will in turn lead to banks granting larger loans. However, he says, bankers will always find ways to bend the NBR norms, no matter how restrictive they might be.
Patrick Gelin, the chairman of BRD-SocGen, the second leading bank in the system, believes in a continued lending increase, too.
“We can anticipate that all types of loans will continue to develop to reach the levels on the other markets in the region,” Gelin said. The share of the banking assets in Romania”s Gross Domestic Product stands at 40% compared with 70% in Poland and almost 100% in the Czech Republic. The gaps are even wider if judging by components, says Gelin, noting the 8% share in the GDP of the consumer credit in Romania, compared with an average of 15% on the markets in the region.
The conference was also attended by the officials of the largest Romanian company, Petrom. Werner Schinhan, deputy chief executive of the company, stated Petrom wanted to maintain its total production of hydrocarbons and upgrade production, refining processes and the fuel distribution by 2010.