{"id":286,"date":"2009-03-09T12:53:29","date_gmt":"2009-03-09T09:53:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/en\/?p=286"},"modified":"2014-03-12T16:41:13","modified_gmt":"2014-03-12T14:41:13","slug":"the-economic-environment-worsensbut-good-news-still-exists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/2009\/03\/09\/the-economic-environment-worsensbut-good-news-still-exists\/","title":{"rendered":"The economic environment worsens,but good news still exists!"},"content":{"rendered":"

It used to be the opposite. Endless good news flowing, week after week, is creating a feeling of security to everyone. Now this is history, the majority of the news makes us sad, skeptical or pessimistic. But still, even under these circumstances, good news exists, sometimes allowing us to create an interesting \u201cping pong\u201d between the positive and the negative news we hear. Let us play this \u201cgame\u201d a bit\u2026 Past due loans in January four times up than 2008 average
\n<\/strong> Past due banking loans recorded in January, accumulated both by individuals and companies, amounted to a record 155 million euros in January, according to data from the NBR (National Bank of Romania), double as much as the maximum value recorded in a month in 2008. Last year, there were months in which past due loans amounted to less than 100 million RON (27 million euros), putting the monthly average for past due loans at 148 million RON (40 million euros). In January, the value of new past due loans was practically four times as high as the 2008 average. The overall volume of past due loans climbed to over 3.5 billion RON (825 million euros) in the first month of this year, after last summer bankers watched as the volume of credits slightly exceeded 2 billion RON.
\n(Source: wwww.zf.ro<\/a>)
\nForeigners make massive investments in Romanian forests
\n<\/strong> Austrian group Holzindustrie Schweighofer and Finland\u2019s Tornator have so far invested 50 million euros in forest acquisition. Forest exploitation is not allowed to exceed the growth rate of that forest, of around 5 cubic meters per hectare per year for deciduous forests and of around 7 cubic meters per hectare per year for spruce forests. According to market information, acquisitions made by foreign investors on the Romanian market exceeded 50,000 hectares, i.e. 150,000 million euros at an average price of 3,000 euros per hectare. Buyers of forests in Romania include Harvard Management Company, the investment fund that belongs to Harvard University. The fund has acquired over 30,000 hectares, according to the quoted sources. Other purchases were made by Swedish investors (4,000 hectares) and by the Porsche family (8,000 hectares). These investors had not made any comment by the time this issue was ready for print.
\n(Source: www.zf.ro<\/a>)
\nForeign debt leaps to 72.5bn-euro all-time high
\n<\/strong> Private companies remain the biggest problem of foreign financing, as they have debt due to for repayment this year and will not be able to refinance in full. The overall debt rose 25.7% last year, to a 72.5 billion-euro new all-time high. The short-term external debt continued to climb in the last quarter of last year, to a record 18.7 billion euros at the end of December, according to data published recently by the NBR (National Bank of Romania). Last year, short-term debt followed an upward trend, apart from the second quarter, when it saw a slight decline, breaking an over three-year period of continuous growth. Banks and private companies account almost exclusively (98%) for short-term loans attracted from abroad. The continued upward trend of short-term debt was mainly prompted by the increase in short-term funding (for periods of less than a year) attracted by Romanian banks, by almost 2 billion euros, to 10.58 billion euros. Whereas sums attracted by banks rose, funding attracted by companies saw a decline against September, from 9.37 billion euros, to 7.7 billion euros.
\n(Source: www.zf.ro<\/a>)
\nCEZ pays 300m euros for wind projects in Dobrogea<\/strong>, after already investing 350m euros
\nCzech-based energy group CEZ, which is developing the largest onshore wind project in Europe that will be built in Dobrogea (SE Romania), paid 300.58 million euros to purchase it from Polish developer Continental Wind Partners in August last year. Also last year, the Czechs invested around 350 million euros in this project, which entails the development and operation of two wind farms. The amount paid stood at 300.584 million euros. \u201cAs at December 31st last year, construction work in progress amounted to 10 billion Czech crowns (350 million euros),\u201d reads a report released by the CEZ group.
\nBefore the deal was signed last year, the sum involved was rumored to amount to 100 million euros, but a 350 MW-project was being considered at the time. In the official announcement, the Czechs specified they had taken over two 600-MW projects, but did not make any reference to the value of the transaction. In last year\u2019s transaction, the Czechs purchased two wind energy projects located in Fantanele and Cogealac, Constanta County.
\n(Source: www.zf.ro<\/a>)
\nMore and more clients are terminating their life insurance contracts
\n<\/strong> Increasingly more Romanians are giving up life insurance products contracted in previous years, even though they get less money than they had saved, because many of them need cash, while others no longer have faith in financial institutions. Insurance companies have had to deal with a wave of contract terminations since the last quarter of 2008. However, their level is low compared with the overall number of active contracts, explains Cornelia Coman, general manager of ING Asigurari de Viata, the largest life insurer on the market. In ING\u2019s case, contract terminations accounted for 0.5% of the active traditional life insurance contracts and for 1.1% of the total number of unit-linked contracts (insurance linked to investment funds).
\n(Source: www.zf.ro<\/a>)
\nDacia sales in Germany will exceed Romanian ones
\n<\/strong> Sales of Romanian car brand Dacia in Germany could exceed those on the Romanian market in the first half of this year in the wake of the vehicle fleet renewal programme carried out in Germany, which will end by mid-year, according to Francois Fourmont, general manager of Automobile Dacia. The 2,500-euro scrapping bonus on the German market had a major impact on Dacia\u2019s sales on that market. Owing to the \u201cJunk Car\u201d programmes in Europe, which led to a sales increase, we will not give up our third production shift. However, we cannot make a sales forecast for more than a few months in advance,\u201d Fourmont told ZF at the Geneva Motor Show on Tuesday, where Dacia launched its first ever concept car – Duster. While in 2008 Dacia\u2019s top three markets were Romania (over 84,000 units), France (over 43,000 units) and Germany (25,500 units), the trend was reversed at the beginning of this year, with sales recorded on the two Western European markets being twice as high as the volume recorded in Romania.
\n(Source: www.zf.ro<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It used to be the opposite. Endless good news flowing, week after week, is creating a feeling of security to everyone. Now this is history, the majority of the news makes us sad, skeptical or pessimistic. But still, even under these circumstances, good news exists, sometimes allowing us to create an interesting \u201cping pong\u201d between […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":59454,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[216,205],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}