What the newspapers say: June  29, 2010 

Romania’s national currency registered the worse official rate in its history, of 4.3257 lei for one euro, find out what we should expect from now on. Elsewhere in the news, one newspaper investigates how much national counties contribute to the national budget and declares Calarasi county an off shore county. Last but not least, an investigation of the Daily Mail British newspaper reveals how Romanian gypsy children are exploited by their parents who sell them for 20,000 British pounds to traffic networks.

The Romanian leu registered on Monday the worse official rate in its history, of 4.3257 lei for one euro, Gandul reads. This time, the crash of the national currency was triggered by the fact that big companies, the rich and the poor, after a week in which politicians approved several times salary and pension cuts and VAT increases, ran to banks and exchange houses to buy foreign currency.

Dealers accuse the National Central Bank, whose director announced that the euro might gain ground to the leu.Surprisingly, the National Bank did not intervene and declared that there was a psychologic shock.

Romania’s representative to the IMF, Mihai Tanasescu said that as far as the IMF is concerned, the balanced exchange rate for Romania is somewhere between 4.1 to 4.2 lei/euro. The newspaper reads that citizens were scared that the euro will increase and exchanged their economies in euro which triggered an increase in the exchange rate.

Romania libera reads about Calarasi, a possible off shore in Romania: the county pays the least VAT money to the state, only about 100 euro/year. After the VAT increase, the sum should increase to with another 150 lei.

With a population of about 316.295 people in 2002, the 34th county in the country, Calarasi had the smalled VAT, customs taxes and revenue tax cash ins. The state collected 175 million lei, which represents 15 times less than Constanta did, 25 times less than Bucharest district 1.

Some big companies spill taxes to Bucharest, a local official declared for the newspaper. The economy is not that developed. Romania’s Businessmen Association general secretary Cristian Parvan explained that in Calarasi people have low incomes which explains the small VAT. Plus, he said that Calarasi has a unique economic structure as it is focused on agriculture, a sector known for the high fiscal evasion.

Romania libera reads about the investigation of the British daily Daily Mail, that reveals how Romanian gypsy children are exploited by their parents and sold for 20,000 British pounds to traffic networks. Daily Mail presents an investigation of children trafficking.

UNICEF declared that most children come from the already famous city Tandarei, South Romania. The newspaper presents the case of the Stanciu family whose child arrived in Great Britain where he was obliged to beg.

Iuri Stanciu, the father, was condemned to two years of prison for sending his child to beg. At 13 years old, Eva Stanciu was begging nearby a shop in Farnborough, a city in North East England, an area which became a magnet for thousands of East European immigrants.