Comvex Inaugurates Largest Grain Terminal in Constanta Harbor Bulk raw material handling company Comvex Constanta is getting ready to inaugurate the largest grain export terminal in the Constanta Harbour, with a capacity of 200,000 tons and become a grain export hub, following a €56m investment started in 2017 and funded by Raiffeisen Bank and EximBank.
The local subsidiary of the German retail chain Lidl announced that the smallest monthly gross income paid to its employees will exceed RON4,000 (€840), starting March 1, up from the current level of RON3,500 (€730).
That is about RON 2,500 (EUR 520) in net terms, representing the highest
minimum revenue in the local retail sector. The figure includes salary,
meal vouchers, annual Easter and Christmas bonuses, as well as other
types of bonuses.
Romania’s Finance Ministry has borrowed €3bn in its first bond issues on foreign markets in 2020. Romania issued two tranches, one with a maturity of 12 years and the other one for 30 years. Investors placed orders for €12bn worth of Romanian debt, more than four times as much as the Romanian state decided to borrow. On the 12-year tranche, the yield was set at 180 basis points (bp) above the mid-swap, respectively 2.04% per year, while on the 30-year tranche, the mid-swap level plus 285 bp resulted
in an interest rate of 3.41% per annum.
Romania’s National Bank (BNR) decided to keep the monetary policy (refinancing) rate at 2.5%, in its board meeting on January 8, a decision aimed at achieving “sustainable economic growth”, among others. The new Government’s gradual approach to the fiscal consolidation is “decent but not enough,” BNR governor Mugur Isarescu (picture) stated in the
press conference after the board meeting.
He implied that the Government should abstain from hiking the pensions by 40% in September, as planned by the previous Government. “Let’s be serious. There is only one solution, and this is a political one. When the economy grows by 4%, one can’t raise something by 40%,” the central bank governor stressed.
The National Liberal Party (PNL) reached a score of 45% in the latest electoral barometer carried out in December 2019 by IMAS at the request of
local radio station Europa FM, up from 39% in November and just under 30% in October.
The Liberals went up significantly in the polls after managing to remove the former Social Democrat Government led by Viorica Dancila in October 2019 and install their own Government, led by Ludovic Orban, despite fragile support in the Parliament. Compared to January 2019, the
party’s score doubled.
The net average wage in Romania increased by 14.6% in October, compared to the same month last year, to RON3,116 (€650) while the average gross wage was RON5,090 (€1,060), announced the statistics office INS. In real terms, the average wage increased by 10.8%. The highest average salaries were recorded in IT&C, with an average of RON7,118, while the lowest wage are in the light industries (RON1,801 in clothing manufacturing).
President Klaus Iohannis scored a landslide victory against former prime minister Viorica Dancila. Over 9 million Romanians voted in the country (almost 50% of the total number of registered voters) while over 930,000 Romanians voted abroad, a new record. In his speech, Klaus Iohannis said that modern, European Romania won, and mentioned the massive vote in the Diaspora.
Over 8.68m Romanians voted in the country (c.670,000 of diaspora voted abroad), in the first round of the presidential elections on Sunday,
November 10, according to final data from the Central Electoral Office (BEC). The turnout rate was 47.66%, the lowest recorded in presidential
elections in Romania after 1989.
On 15 Oct 2019, Romania’s president, Klaus Iohannis, nominated Ludovic Orban, the 56-year-old leader of the opposition National Liberal Party (PNL), as the new prime ministerdesignate.
Orban was born in the Romanian city of Brasov and has been involved in politics for close to thirty years. He worked in local administration in Bucharest during the 1990s and later served for almost two years as transport minister. He was a member of parliament from 2008 to 2016 and became his party’s official leader in June 2017. Orban is a devoted liberal.
