IOAN CEZAR CORÂCI, LEADER OF UGIR 1903: "The government did nothing to help the economy"

General Confederation Of The Romanian Industrial Employers "UGIR 1903" is accusing the Government that ever since taking over its mandate, it did nothing to save Romania"s economy.

UGIR 1903 representatives have announced yesterday, in a press conference, that they are voiding the "memorandum" with the Boc Government, because the Government did not respect the social dialogue, and of the Government"s faulty management of the anti-crisis plan.

The President of UGIR 1903, Ioan Cezar Corâci, has criticized the obvious "self-interest" of the Boc Government, claiming that all the steps that the Government has announced so far are really just obligations.

Ioan Cezar Corâci explained: "The payment of outstanding subsidies to farmers or the reimbursement of debts towards private companies do not represent steps for fighting the crisis, they are obligations! The fact that the Government won"t be working with taxpayer money without paying any interest on it, or the reimbursement of the VAT tax, these aren"t anti-crisis steps".

The leader of UGIR 1903 said that even the national thermal insulation program for residential blocks will be a failure, because the initial budget which amounted to billions, was drastically cut, to over 80 million Euros.

Corâci said that the government decided that, out of the tens of thousand of blocks that were to undergo insulation, in fact only 50000 apartments will undergo this process!

Mihai Păsculescu, general director of UGIR 1903, also criticized the Government maintaining that the plan for fighting the crisis should have been finalized before the passing of the state budget.

Mihai Păsculescu explained: "The anti-crisis plan should have been completed before the passing of the budget. It would have been better to postpone the passing of the budget and have this issue solved.

Out of the 30 measures that professional unions suggested, just 30 were approved. Some of them, which are aimed at reducing and fighting tax evasion have been ignored. The Fraud Squad or ANAF (National Tax Department) did not suggest any steps for dealing with these issues".

On a different note, Corâci said that, given the current conditions, tax collection needs to improve and spending needs to be reduced.

"Romania has the highest tax evasion rate in the EU, of 21% of the GDP, and the Government doesn"t show any interest in finding solutions for this issue", Corâci said.

Discussing the agreement with the IMF, the leader of UGIR 1903 said that Romania has an acute lack of liquidity and that the loan is needed to uphold the leu exchange rate.

"A short term agreement with the IMF is needed because of the lack of liquidity, but it depends on what terms, and we need to be very careful with the terms in the addendums!", Corâci said.

The president of UGIR 1903 said that there is a risk that the IMF would block a series of necessary sectorial policies, that the EU allowed because of the circumstances of the crisis.

Păsculescu warned that in June-July the pressure on the exchange rate will be huge, as private companies will rush to pay the 20 billion Euros debt.

"If we fail to judiciously manage the money obtained from the IMF, there is a chance that in June-July the exchange rate will jump to 5-6 lei for one Euro, which would be a disaster", the general director of UGIR 1903 said.