March 19, 2022

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Newsroom, 19.03.2022, 14:03

ENERGY Electricity and gas prices will be capped for a year
starting April, under a new emergency ordinance the government in Bucharest
passed on Friday. So, household consumers who do not exceed 100 kilowatts per
month will be paying 0.68 lei per kilowatt, VAT included. For a consumption
under 300 kilowatts, the fee will be 0.80 lei per kilowatt at the most. Under
the new law, non-household consumers will be charged up to one Leu per
kilowatt, Romania’s Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca says adding that the prices
for gas will be around 0.31 lei for household consumers and no more than 0.37
lei per kilowatt for non-household consumers. The measures are meant to offer
stability to both the citizens and the business environment, at the same time
being in accordance with the free market rules. The new measures will be applied from April 1st
this year until March 31st 2023. Companies that fail to comply with
the aforementioned rules are subject to fines and the impact of the new
measures has been estimated at 2.9 billion Euros by the end of the year.

REFUGEES 11 thousand Ukrainian refugees entered Romania
on Friday in an attempt to avoid the war in that country. The total number of
Ukrainian refugees who have made it to Romania in the past three weeks since
the beginning of the conflict has almost reached half a million. However, very
few of them applied for asylum and only about 80 thousand have chosen to remain
in Romania. According to official data, 32 thousand of them are minors and
accommodation facilities have been occupied 70%. Authorities and civil society
are making efforts to provide proper accommodation conditions, food, medical
assistance and education for their children. A lot of companies have come up
with job offers for the refugees. The European Commission has decided to
earmark special funds to Romania in an attempt to enable the country to cope
with the large number of refugees.

COVID-19 3,160 new Covid-19 infections have been reported in
Romania on Saturday. 44 related fatalities have also been reported and the number
of those hospitalized has reached 3,120 out of whom 465 in ICUs. The number of
infections has been on the rise since Romania gave up all the prevention
measures on March 9th.

SPORTS Romania’s national handball side is today playing North
Macedonia in Bucharest in the preliminaries of the World Championship 2023. In
the first match in Skopje two days ago, our handballers lost to the hosts
22-30. The winner on aggregate will be playing the Czech Republic in the next
stage of the preliminaries. Also on Saturday, Romania’s national fifteen is up
against the Netherlands in their last game Rugby Europe Championship, the
second major tournament in Europe after the famous Six Nations. Romania is
hankering for a win in order to rank third in the preliminaries of World cup
2023.

UKRAINE Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky
has today made an appeal to Moscow to resume talks on peace and security in the
region, because otherwise the consequences for Russia will be felt by several
generations, France press reports. Several rounds of peace talks have been
staged since Russia commenced its onslaught on the neighboring Ukraine on
February 24th. In another move, Zelensky announced the Ukrainians who
got relocated because of the war were going to get assistance. He explained the
ministers of the Ukrainian government are working on a programme of providing
support to those who had to abandon their homes or flee the war. The Russian
army carries on its operations in the regions of Luhansk in the east of
Ukraine, where many people have been killed and houses destroyed. Russian war
planes on Friday destroyed 69 military targets in Ukraine including three S-300
anti-aircraft defence units, the Russian Defence Ministry has announced. According
to the US Department of Defence, since the beginning of the invasion, Russia
has launched over 1,080 missiles against Ukraine. 3.2 million Ukrainians have
left the country, two thirds of them arriving in Poland, which is just a
stopover during their exile.

(bill)