What the newspapers say: August 9, 2010 

We travel on damaged roads, we use buses that have exceeded by far their life expectancy and we live in old buildings, one newspaper reads on Monday about an expired Romania. Elsewhere in the news, one newspaper notes that Romania forgot its Chinese partner. On a lighter tone, tens of thousands of Bucharest citizens prefer to spend just one day at the seaside and return the same day due to high prices.

Evenimentul zilei reads on Monday about an expired Romania: citizens travel on damaged roads, use buses that exceeded by far their life expectancy and live in old buildings with overused installations. A big part of the infrastructure Romania rests on needs urgent repairs.

After 20 years of repairs, Romania is about to expire – new constructions mushroom from place to place while modernization works launched before the 90s are lost in files. Tens of billions of euro would be necessary to exit this situation but there are no money and projects advance hard.

The newspaper analyzed the main structure on which Romania’s activity is based today: road and railway infrastructure, electricity systems and heat systems, water supply. Most of these facilities did not reach half of the country’s population that lives in the rural area.

Authorities need at least 50 billion euro to improve the situation and lots of determination but meanwhile Romania took up a 20 billion euro to be able to pay pensions and salaries.

Elsewhere in the news, in an interview for Romania libera, Romania’s Ambassador to Beijing talked about the absence of a serious business plan for Chinese investor. The diplomat suggests that Bucharest cannot take advantage of the traditional political relations that exist between the two countries and that each year Romania misses out on the Chinese investments.

The Chinese invest about 40 billion dollars annually, official data reveal. Capital entries in China amount to about 1 billion weekly. Romania’s Ambassador to China, Viorel Isticioaia Budura declares that Romania should count more on its traditional relations with China and take advantage of the possible investors that might prefer Romania.

In his opinion, Romania should set up a specific offer to the Chinese, to include a business tourism strategy for the businessmen to understand Romania.

Gandul reads that more and more people prefer to leave for the seaside in the morning and return in the night, due to the high prices practiced by seaside resorts. Police officers declared that tens of thousand of cars travel to the seaside in the morning and the same wave returns late at night.

Police officers declared that there are also those who speed away towards the seaside: there was a young man who was caught driving the car with 248 km/hour, another one with 237 km/hour and a third with „only” 234 km/hour.