February 23, 2016 UPDATE
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Newsroom, 23.02.2016, 12:30
The committees for culture and for budget with the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate in Bucharest on Tuesday hosted talks on the financial situation of the Romanian Television Corporation TVR. The final conclusion was that there might be two solutions that could yield results on the short term: amendments to the law on insolvency so that it may be applied to the TVR as well, or to declare the bankruptcy of the Romanian public television and set up a new structure. Attending the talks, Romanian Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos said that urgent measures are needed in order to stop the losses presently incurred by the public TV station, adding that bailing out the institution with budget money would be impossible as it might be regarded as an intervention of the state. In turn, the Senate president Calin Popescu Tariceanu has mentioned the Romanian television’s lack of performance and praised the public radio, which is functioning under the same legislation but with good results. In another move, Ovidiu Miculescu, CEO and president of the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Corporation (SRR), said that it was not the law that had pushed the Romanian Television Corporation in the present disastrous situation, but the way in which the institution had been led. Miculescu went on to say that the new draft, in its present form, would not save the public television but could cause severe and irreversible disruptions in the SRR’s editorial and financial stability.
An IMF delegation is in Chisinau to asses the Republic of Moldova’s macro-economic situation. The IMF visit comes at a time when the former soviet republic with a Romanian-speaking majority is in dire need of foreign funding in order to avoid a financial breakdown. Pundits in Chisinau say that even if an agreement is reached with international lenders, the money cannot be received earlier than October. According to experts, the Republic has in the past year registered more drawbacks than progress, fueling the IMF’s already high level of scepticism concerning Chisinau’s intention to improve its legislative and financial situation.
The value of the merger and acquisition market in Romania increased by 160% in 2015, exceeding 3 billion Euros, a research conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers Romania shows. Most transactions were made in the industrial production sector and on the real estate market, with the average value of a transaction standing at 26 million Euros, PricewaterhouseCoopers Romania also shows. The significant growth of the local market is partly due to a similar evolution at international level, as the total value of global mergers and acquisitions in 2015 broke the all-time high of 2007. PricewaterhouseCoopers, headquartered in New York, is the largest professional consultancy and auditing service provider in the world.
The Romanians living abroad are vectors of development and modernisation for the country, Romania’s President, Klaus Iohannis, on Tuesday told a conference in Bucharest, attended by representatives of the Romanian organisations in the Diaspora. The Romanian President also said the Romanians’ presence abroad should be a matter of choice and not of necessity and promised, on short term, to initiate a partnership meant to render Romania a prosperous and strong state. In turn, Romanian Prime Minister, Dacian Ciolos, has made public the government’s intention to take a series of measures to determine the Romanians living outside the borders to get more involved in investment projects, encourage people’s return to rural areas, increase the scholarship fund, improve consular services and help them exert their own rights, such as the right to vote.
A ceasefire agreement will be enforced in Syria as of February 27th, FP news agency quotes a joint Russian-American communiqué, released by the U.S. Department of State. The agreement excludes the Islamic State terrorist group and the Al-Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s branch in Syria. The government and the opposition in Syria stood for a ceasefire, but they set pre-conditions, which are difficult to meet. Russia and the US are co-chairs of the International Support Group for Syria, which is made up of 17 countries. UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, has hailed the agreement, considering it a sign of hope for the Syrian population, but he drew attention that there is still a lot to be done to enforce it.
