After a busy day yesterday, the Friday morning news a rather pink, preparing for a nice, quiet weekend. Blair seems to forget about restrictions for Romanian workers. It may have something to do with Spain announcing a 3.8% economic growth and 23 billion euros more in the GNP brought mainly by immigrants.
Anyway, Bucharest finally became an attraction for investors. Thing look good also in foreign relations. Romanian-Hungarian governmental meeting was quite peaceful and NATO may soon support the energy policies lobbied for by Romania.
Bucharest ranked ninth in the preferences expressed by major players in real estate development and retail, gathered at Cannes.
The projects for Bucharest were a source of amaze - „Baneasa Shopping City”, „Sun City”, „Liberty Center”, „Colloseum” and „Esplanada” making all investors wonder they were informed correctly about Romania or not.
Bucharest in the final top 10, behind Moscow, Prague, St. Petersburg, Bratislava, Budapest, Ljubljana, Talinn and Sofia, Evenimentul Zilei reads.
More good news for the potential investors: the Romanian National Bank will gradually erase the monetary policy restrictions maintaining as market control tools only the minimum obligatory deposit for banks and the reference interest, as Gandul informs.
Talking about banks: major surprises came from the non-banking financial institutions (NFIs). After the National Bank identified the shareholders and share distributions in NFIs, it came out that most NFIs (88%) are in fact opened and supported by banks.
The non-banking credits grew 52.7% at the end of 2005, up to 9.3 billion RON (over 3 billion US dollars), Cotidianul found out.
Other significant figures in the news on cash: Spain reported that over half of the economic growth during the past five years is due to immigrants (Romanians are the third most numerous immigrants in Spain).
A governmental report shows that the growth was 3.8%, more than the Government expected, while the immigrants contributed 23 billion euros for the state budget and formed 50% more jobs, according to Cotidianul.
UK’s Tony Blair seems to have had a revelation after these figures were published since, all of a sudden, the new immigration law gave up on all immigrant restriction everyone talked about for the past month.
Instead, new and strengthened attributions were granted for immigration officers and Police, who are now enabled to arrest human smugglers and employers who accept or force immigrants into black market labor, Adevarul reads.
Closer to Romania, PM Tariceanu met the Hungarian homologue, Ferenc Gyurcsany. While Hungary salutes Romania’s accession to the EU, Tariceanu makes it clear that no ethnic-based territorial autonomy will be ever granted for Hungarians in Romania.
Still, the large cultural autonomy is a plus and the Romanian Education Minister even suggested Romanian financing for a private university in Transylvania, teaching in Hungarian, Gandul informs.
But enough good news. The Orthodox Church says it would accept the unveiling of the former collaborators of Ceausescu’s political police, Securitate, but only if the data stays within the Church, thus discriminating all other categories, Romania Libera comments.
Privatization may be a good thing, but not when the Russian bear is agitated in the energy are. The electricity distribution companies still owned by the Romanian state - Electrica Muntenia Nord, Electrica Transilvania Sud and Electrica Transilvania Nord - still have to wait before privatization, Adevarul reads.
