What the newspapers say: April 15, 2011

The biggest ten investment projects that would restart Romania’s local economy are doable without spending the state’s budget and will generate budget revenues worth 8.9 billion euro and almost half a million working places in the next five years. Bucharest citizens are called at a referendum on June 19 to decide the administration’s organization. Another newspaper reads about the stakes of the referendum. A citizen teaches the government a lesson: he received 15,000 euro from three EU member states to signal with informative tags the most important historical monuments in Bucharest, including the government’s headquarters.

Gandul reads about the ten biggest infrastructure projects with which foreign investors in Romania might relaunch local economy without spending the budget’s money. The projects, according to the Foreign Investors Council, will generate budget revenues of 8.9 billion euro and almost half a million of new jobs in five years. The newspaper reads that this is not about ideal projects, as a part of them have already started.

By 2015, the state should allocate 11.9 billion euro to implement all these projects. The sum is half of the total investments, estimated at 23 billion euro. The other half will be financed either from EU funds, or from private funds, private-public partnerships or European Bank for Investments financing.

Projects include infrastructure sectors in transports, energy and agriculture and the organization of an important sports event.

Evenimentul Zilei reads about the referendum organized in Bucharest on June 19 where citizens are called to decide how the capital city will be governed for the next years. Citizens will have to answer to 7 questions related to the re-organization of the local administration and the development of the city.

Over 1.7 million citizens in Bucharest are expected on June 19 to cast their vote. According to sources the organization of the referendum will cost several hundreds of thousands of euro.

Romania libera reads about the stake of the referendum: a several billion euro budget and the imminence of local elections next year. Citizens will have to decide whether district mayors will be elected by citizens, whether local councils will be eliminated from districts, if the budget will be centralized and if there will be uninominal elections for general counselors.

There is also a stake for the citizens, the newspaper reads: the money from districts that manage bigger local budgets could be redistributed to the poorer ones. District 4 and 5 citizens would be most advantaged because they benefit from lower budgets.

Romania libera reads about the initiative of Romanian David Chifiriuc who managed to teach the Romanian government a lesson of efficiency: he received a 15,000 euro grant from the EU to attach informative tags to the most important historical monuments in Bucharest including the government’s headquarters.

However, the institution refused to accept the tag. Officially, Bucharest has 2,400 historical monuments, Romania’s Culture ministry data shows. Chifiriuc wanted to increase the people’s awareness and obtained 15,000 euro for 400 tags. With all authorizations in his hand, David went on to install all the tags.

However, he could not install his tag to the government’s headquarters building because government officials did not know procedures in such a case and said that they will look into it.