What the newspapers say: February 16, 2009

Spectacular armed robberies appeared like mushrooms in Romania in the past month, one newspaper reads on Monday. Elsewhere in the news, most major projects proposed by Bucharest’s mayor Sorin Oprescu were rejected in the General Council. Also in Bucharest, 50,000 companies could disappear due to the economic crisis.

Romania libera reads about the concerning increase of armed robberies across Romania in the past month. In order to prevent their expansion, the government plans to send 2,000 police officers in the streets and change the law regulating the security requirements for banks.

The first reaction of police forces was to scan the country: they found 54 people listed as wanted by the police; 96 possible felons and 916 suspects currently under investigation.

Romania’s Interior Minister Dan Nica declared that in his opinion, there was no direct connection between the financial crisis and the robbery cases. Nica said that the police would win the fight against felons and accuses Transilvania Bank, recently robed of 60,000 euro, of not taking enough security measures.

However, Bank officials reject the criticism and declared that their security plan was approved by the Interior Ministry regulations and fully comply to law 333/2003 regarding the protection of goods.

Cotidianul reads that the most important projects proposed by Bucharest’s mayor Sorin Oprescu were rejected in the General Council of the City Hall. Counselors refused to approve the projects, on grounds that they are too expensive and unrealistic.

The team of seven counselors who supported the mayor in the local elections started to disentangle. Two of the seven abandoned him already: Rosemarie Olanescu and Victor Dimitriu. Thus, Olanescu declared that despite some image actions, nothing has happened in Bucharest. She added that Oprescu did not do anything for Bucharest.

However, Oprescu promised in his campaign that he would build more kindergartens, reconstruct the green belt of the capital city, build 60 football fields within neighborhoods and create quality social services.

Oprescu wanted to spend 3.3 million euro to plan exotic plants in graveyards and set up video cameras. Plus, one of the projects included a 21.4 million euro investment to set up water channels and gas infrastructure in graveyards. Another 970.198 million euro were destined for electricity supplies.

Counselors also refused to approve a 4 million euro spending to expand lighting installations in graveyards. The value of the graveyards projects was established by one company only, Eco Via Design and Engineering SRL.

Gandul reads that in 2008, almost 9,000 companies went bankrupt at national level – a 65% increase as compared to the previous year while in January, almost 1,600 companies entered insolvency – 600 times more than in January 2008.

The crisis year, the newspaper reads, will clean up the trade registry in Romania as more and more companies will have to shut down their activity. Last year, some 52,699 companies were erased from the registry, a 4.7% increase as compared to 2007, Romania’s National Commercial Registry data reveals.