October 21, 2013
A roundup of domestic news.
România Internațional, 21.10.2013, 13:00
Romania’s prime minister Victor Ponta today starts a 3-day official visit to the US, where he is expected to reaffirm the strategic, political and military partnership between the two states. Victor Ponta is due to meet vice-president Joe Biden, the US secretaries of commerce and energy and the World Bank president. He is accompanied on his trip by a governmental delegation made up of the ministers for energy, the environment, education and foreign affairs. The Romanian prime minister will have talks with representatives of American companies doing business in Romania on topics such as energy, IT and technology.
The Romanian state will put up for sale 15% of its Romgaz shares on the Bucharest Stock Exchange and, as a first, also on the London Stock Exchange, hoping to obtain 300-400 million euros in exchange. Romgaz is the largest producer and supplier of natural gas in Romania.
The failure to privatise CFR Marfa, the freight division of the Romanian Railways Company, will affect Romania’s reputation among investors, Guillermo Tolosa, the IMF representative for Romania and Bulgaria, told Bursa.ro. Tolosa said the IMF would discuss with the Romanian authorities concrete steps for the privatisation of this company. Last week, the government announced that the sale of the state-owned CFR Marfa would resume. A joint IMF and European Commission delegation will arrive in Bucharest on Tuesday to assess a precautionary-type agreement signed with Romania.
The Chamber of Deputies in Bucharest is today discussing a simple no-confidence motion submitted by the two parties in opposition, the centre-right Liberal Democratic Party and the populist Dan Diaconescu Party of the People. The supporters of the motion call on the centre-left Social Liberal government to withdraw its emergency ordinance related to the insolvency code, which in their opinion is an unprecedented attack on independent media and the business environment. Prime minister Victor Ponta says the code seeks to combat tax evasion and non-payment of state budget contributions. A vote on the motion is scheduled for Tuesday.
Romania’s interior minister Radu Stroe has again called on the opponents to the Rosia Montana gold mining project to respect the law, no longer block traffic and refrain from violence. This comes a few days after the car of the culture minister Daniel Barbu was vandalised by a few protesters in the centre of Bucharest. The opponents to the cyanide-based mining project in Rosia Montana again took to the streets on Sunday in Bucharest and other cities for the 8th week in a row.
The Romanian tennis player Simona Halep is listed on the 14th position in the WTA world ranking published today. She went up 4 places after winning her 5th final this year on Sunday in Moscow. Halep also triumphed in Nurnberg, in Germany, Hertogenbosch, in Holland, Budapest, in Hugary and New Haven in the US. The next best-ranked Romanian player in the WTA standings is Sorana Carstea, on the 22nd position.
