A possible agreement between IMF and Romania for financial support

In the following period, an International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission will come to Bucharest in order to evaluate the macroeconomic situation and to initiate the discussions with the view to conclude a support agreement to cover the financing deficit in 2009.

Economic forecasts for this year look pretty bad, and Romania needs external funding. This funding is needed to cover the external deficit and the budget deficit having in view the strong decrease of foreing direct investments, direct investments in productive assets by companies incorporated in foreign countries and decrease of the revenues at the state budget.

According to the latest estimations, the budget deficit at the end of the year is about 5% of GDP and external deficit increased in October to 14.4 billion euros, being almost 11% higher than after ten months of 2007.

National Tax Administration from Romania (ANAF) includes the amounts derived from the rental contracts within the category of incomes obtained from self-employment. Exceptions are contracts to lease agricultural goods. According to the Fiscal Code, are treated as income from rents all income, in cash and / or in kind, resulted from the giving up of the use of movable and immovable property acquired by the owner, beneficial owner or other legal owner.

On the charge, there will be:

• tax net income, the rate of 16% – compared with 12% share of the gross income from property disposal use;
• tax net income, the rate of 5.5% CASS – like any income derived from independent activities

Regarding the taxation, the person who derives income from property disposal use has the obligation to fill in, until the 15 of May next year, the form 200 “Declaration on income made”, code 14.13.01.13.

We are glad to announce that 2009 brings excellent news concerning the evolution of Identity Compass® on national and international level. March has a flying start with the licensing training organized in Arad and sustained by Adela Cristea during the 12th – 14th March, and also the first Worldwide Trainer & Consultant meeting.

This Worldwide Trainer & Consultant meeting will take place to Barcelona (Spain) during 21st – 22nd March, bringing together Identity Compass® trainers & consultants from Germany, UK, Spain, Italy, Russia, Sweden, Indonesia, India, Brazil, Poland, South Africa, Venezuela, Portugal, Croatia, Serbia, USA, Romania, who will have the opportunity to discuss with Arne Maus and Dr. Scheffer about latest insights.

Jordan Sheppard Romania, the local branch of the British headhunting company JordanSheppard, launches the program “Consultancy at Crisis Time”, targeting both companies who wish to better adapt their HR strategy to the current economic context, as well as professionals who wish to have a realistic insight into the labor market and to be assisted in their careers.

The program will be in place for two months. Further details about it can be obtained contacting the office of Jordan Sheppard Romania, tel: +40 21 569 3672 or by email, contact person: Elena Ionescu.

The moment when a new member of the team is being recruited within the company, the employer assumes, beside the salary, some other expenses as, for example, the assurance of a safe and well organized working place, expenses related to the materials he-she will consume and obviously the mandatory taxes for the state budget.

We will analyse further on the situation of the Republic of Moldova regarding the taxes which the employer has to support for his own employees.

Thus, in agreement with the legislation from the Republic of Moldova, each employer is obliged to calculate and retain each month different taxes regarding his own employees taking into account the exemptions claimed by the employee, the contributions or the bonuses calculated in accordance to the decisions made by the Major Fiscal State Inspectorate, The Medical Insurance National House and The National Social Insurances House of the Republic of Moldova.

Ascent Group has constantly developed in the last years high quality training programs. As a result of the feedback received from the customers and also of the recurrent demands from the actual and potential customers, we decided to start some open trainings in all the countries where we have offices: Romania (Bucharest and Arad), Republic of Moldova (Chişinău), Bulgaria (Sofia), Serbia (Belgrade).

The trainings will contain many new topics for the Romanian training market such as: Operational management, Supply chain management, Transports management, Finances for sales people, Cost controlling, Performance as assistant manager.

The open trainings will also cover general topics such as: Communication, Presentation techniques, Leadership, Time management, Project management, Conflict management, Stress management.

The Administration of Timpuri Noi society that owns a 5 hectares plot of land in the center of Bucharest asked last week the approval of the shareholders to obtain finances either by selling plots, either by accessing of loans from institutiuons or from natural persons.

Bucharest’s provider of engines, turbines, equipments and spare parts is about to be relocated, thus he put up for sale the land on which there was the plant’s platform at the price of 100 million euros, without VAT. The plant’s managing board received last year many offers for the land situated in Unirii area after the shareholders authorized him to capitalize, by negociating, the Company’s building. But the offers were rejected because it did not carry out all the criteria.

Although the number of the transactions contracted on the real estate market diminished drastically in the second half of the year, the representative of Timpuri Noi declares that the demand for his lands did not decreased.

The state has decided to increase the capital of the CEC Bank with 900 million lei and Eximbank and the Guarantee Loans for SMEs want to fully ensure the loans for small business offered by commercial banks in order to relaunch the process of financing for SMEs .

The trend to generate new products for small and medium enterprises is a reason of joy for companies. These loans are specially offered to finance current business, not for major investments in such cases banks preferring to maintain a strict control.

These loans are coming to meet the needs of small business owners. For this reason the loans offered without any material guarantee provides, first of all, the advantage of obtaining the necessary amounts of a good management of current payments. Most entrepreneurs who are facing difficulties in this regard have available funds for short term expenses. The cost to access such a product bank is similar with the one of a normal credit.

The evaluation for oil barrel price made by Goldman Sachs analysts is very optimistic – the oil price could decrease till 30 dollars in the first quarter of the next year.

The orders decrease as a result of the global crisis and the recession from some very industrialized states are the main reasons of this evaluation.

Also, it’s possible that OPEC will reduce at the beginning of the next year the production with a million barrels/day over the expected decrease of this month.

Now, the oil is quoted at 46,28 dollars per barrel in New York and 46,41 dollars per barrel in London. The values are with approximately 100 dollars less than the record quotation from July, 147,27 dollars per barrel.

Starting 15th of December 2008 the value added tax rate decrease from 19% at 5% for dwellings transactions with a maximum value of 100 000 Euro.

The measures intends to unblock the real estate market and has a double target: to prevent spreading the effects of economic crisis and as social protection measure.

The new 5 % of VAT fated to relaunch the construction and real estate sector but is a difficult process without a sustained lending process, a first good step might be the restart of financing process by banks.

The decrease of VAT, on long term will actuate and diversify the offers for the low sector of real estate where now the request is high for 100 000 – 120 000 Euro dwellings.

Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development (MMDD) launches the second selection session for projects in the field of nature protection, to provide non refundable financial assistance in the Sectoral Operational Program „Environment”, namely Priority Axis 4 – „Implementation of Appropriate Management Systems for Protection of the Nature”.

The projects should be developed in line with the objectives and strategy for financing related priority axis 4 – „Implementation of Appropriate Management Systems for Protection of Nature” of the POS Environment.

The requests for funding (the application form) and the Applicant’s Guide is available on the website of MMDD (www.mmediu.ro). The Applicant Guide contains details about the conditions of access the funding system and the instructions for completion and submission of funding requests.

According to a bill that is to be introduced within the Romanian Parliament, starting with next year the employees might receive vouchers for holiday from the employer. The maximum annual value that might be granted will represent the equivalent of six minimum gross wages per economy.

In accordance with the agreement between the Government, the syndicates and the associations of employers, beginning with the 1st of January 2009, the minimum gross wage granted will be 600 RON, therefore the employer might receive at the most 3600 RON per year for the holidays.

In this way, the law allows to the employer to offer a supplementary benefit to the employees, under the form of a payment for the holiday, out of which the state will return the taxes. The condition for the employer to benefit of this facility is that the company registers profit.

Big corporates are often seen as distant and less caring than small family-businesses and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). An employee may never even meet the Managing Director of the company let alone to be directly motivated by him. The challenge for a bigger organisation then seems to be in communicating the company vision – “raison d’être”, and values from the top-management to all levels of employees, create trust, inspire and motivate all employees to work for the common goal.

A recent study exploring employee perceptions of organisational trustworthiness across Europe¹ indicates that organisations, big or small, are not doing this job very well…Employee trust in organisations seems to be alarmingly low when only 42% of employees believe that their organisation can be trusted, as the study shows. The study was conducted by training and coaching company Krauthammer on behalf of a specialist team representing seven European universities².

Every recruitment process, whether handled internally or through a recruitment agency, starts with a good definition of the ideal candidate profile. If we are talking about a middle or top management position, inevitably the ideal profile will contain the following expressions: “leadership abilities”, “vision” and “business understanding”, “thinking out-of-the-box”, “inspiring people”, “reflects the values and the culture of the company”, etc.

The expectations that the new manager has to fulfill are also clearly stated: team development, process optimization, meeting sales targets or other business objectives.

According to the Ministry of Economy and Finance, beginning with 2009 the Fiscal Code will suffer several changes:

VAT

The persons that are not registered for VAT purpose (especially the natural persons) and who buy new intra community means of transport will not be obliged to pay VAT in Romania for these acquisitions before the enrolling of the new means of transport, those enrolling in Romania not being possible without this proof.

Until now, VAT was paid till the 25th of the month following the intra community acquisition and the proof of the payment was not requested at the enrolling.

Excices

The legal entities that commercialize, in retail, system energetic power products for which excises should be paid, for example all types of fuels, are obliged to be registered at the Territorial Fiscal Authority.

Starting this Monday the President of Romania, Mr. Traian Basescu, promulgated the Law regarding updates of the first paragraph of article 134 from Law no 53/2003 – Labour Code.

Employees will benefit of 3 additional days of leave (excepting those already stipulated). These days will be: first and second day after the Whitsun (the Whitsun is celebrated on Sunday, 50 days after Easter) and the 15th of August, when is celebrated the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin.

Few of us truly understand what the importance of working in a team is. How can we be efficient working in a team and why working together? One of the apparently insignificant aspects would be the need to have a strong motivation from each team member in order to wish and determine to involve itself and to work within a team.

A strong motivation for some people would be either a higher wage or a raise. Each of us has different motivations but for co-working in a team there must be a final purpose, a common gain, even though individual motivations are different.

Jordan Sheppard has recently taken part in the renowned International Language Recruitment Fair, in London. The event is known as the biggest and also the most exciting event of its kind and brought together numerous top companies and over 10 000 multilingual professionals. Jordan Sheppard was present at this event trying to identify talented headhunters for its growing international team. Jordan Sheppard is an elite company in the field of human resources services, mainly executive search, who also operates in Romania, through the office opened in Bucharest in November 2007.

Why “Bermuda Triangle”? Due to the fact the entire recruitment process is based mainly on working with people. And knowing that we, as human nature, are so unpredictable, here is how a sinuous relation has been created among: candidate – recruiter – client. Since I have been working in this area have heard, seen and lived all kind of both pleasant and less pleasant experiences.

Unfortunately, at the present time many of us realize in a small percentage or at all what our roles in this equation are. From my own experience I can tell you that the recruiter has the toughest role. This one is the “lever” between candidate and employer. Depending on its successes or failures this one could be either congratulated or insulted. This one is responsible for everything that is going on during the entire recruitment process as well as afterwards, during follow-up phase. This one is responsible when a client or candidate is unsatisfied by the choice they made.

The annual inflation rate, targeted by the National Bank increased in July this year to a peak of the last three years, 9.04%, compared with 8.61% in June and 8.46% in May. At the beginning of August the National Bank of Romania also increased the inflation forecast for the end of 2008, from 6% to 6.6%. Initially the proposed target of the National Bank for the inflation in 2008 was 3.8% plus or minus one percentage.

At the entire economical level, the rhythm of growth of the work productivity exceeded for the first time in 2007 that of the income (22.6%), as shown in the information provided this month by the National Institute of Statistics.

The NIS‘ data points out that between 2002 and 2006, the work productivity increased faster than the wages, related to the levels registered in the last years.

The hourly cost of the labor increased during the last semester of 2007 with 8,18% in comparison to the previous semester, the most significant increases in price being registered in the health area and social assistance, with over 24,5%, as well as in civil engineering, with 12,5%, as announced by the National Institute of Statistics. A slight reduction of 1.13% was registered only in the extractive industry area.

In comparison to the same period of the year 2006, the most important annual increases of the semestrial index of the hourly labor cost are observed in civil engineering (27,59%), in the extractive industry (27,09%) and in transport, depositing and communication departments (24,01%). The most insignificant increase was recorded in Public administration (7.86%), followed by Education (11.15%).

In accordance with the estimations of the members of the Financial Banking Analysts Association from Romania (AAFBR), the country’s economy will raise with almost 6,53% in 2008. They also estimate an appreciation of the national currency at 3.51 lei/euro at the end of 2008.

In keeping with the data furnished by the National Institute of Statistics, Romania’s internal gross product (PIB) increased with 6% in 2007, reaching to 121.3 thousand million euros. Regarding the current banking account deficit, the analysts anticipate a deepening of 14.73% from the internal gross product and that of the budgetary deficit at 2.83% from the PIB.

After many disputes, the Order 92/2008, issued by the Minister of Labor, Family and Social Equity, Paul Pacuraru, who was modifying the application norms of the Law 19/2000 regarding the public pension and social security system was canceled. The cancellation comes through the Order 128/2008, issued by the same Minister and published in the Official Gazette no. 168 from 3rd of March 2008.

The Order 92/2008 was defining the monthly gross income that is subject of taxation, respectively by the inclusion of new categories of employee benefits as subjects of taxation, such as the presents offered to the employees, the use of company car and company phone for personal purposes.

Beginning with the 3rd of March 2008 have been launched the first measures of investment with a strong impact on restructuring agriculture, food industry and rural areas. These measures have conditions similar to those of the SAPARD program, are expected by most of the potential beneficiaries, and have prepared the institutional and legislative framework of implementation.

Practically, the companies who are active in agriculture and other eligible applicants can already deliver projects to be approved for the three active measures regarding investments in agriculture: in the farms, processing units and development of rural infrastructure.

Together with the approval of the National Program for Rural Development, Romania will receive from the European Union an initial advance of 3.5% of the total value allocated of about 8 billion euros, to start the first actions of financing.

About Romania: