The companies from our region interested in becoming more entrepreneurial

In January 2009 Ascent Group has signed a strategic partnership with the very known American expert in researching and promoting the principles of entrepreneurship and innovative business solutions – Larry Farrell. Due to this partnership, Ascent Group is going to represent Mr. Farell in Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia and Moldova for training and consultancy services on entrepreneurship topics.

The conclusion of this partnership was followed by some visits of Larry Farrell in the region, who launched the program personally in Romania between 10-18 April 2009 and în Bulgaria on October 6.

The year 2009 was certainly not the best for Moldova, in all respects. It started with a campaign that slowly degenerated into a real political crisis, which, unfortunately, at the end of the year continues. A political crisis that we hope it will be resolved soon and which in tandem with global financial and economic crisis has created an unprecedented situation for Moldova.

However, nothing can lie a good eye of an investor who knows that a crisis may be a perfect runway, if you know how to pave the way and take advantage of the specific geographical region. An economic crisis brings beautiful investment opportunities with little money, because the whole economy has become “cheaper”, but with the same critical needs. The giants in the business world recommend the crisis as the most favorable moment for large projects.

Moldova is a special case which succeeded to stick his head in 2 crises that affect itself one to each other.

The portal e-Romania will be launched on December 25th with the first ten services. So whether you must pay a tax on a good or a fine, starting with this date you can do it directly on internet, saving any unnecessary travels or lossing time staying at the endless queues.

Later on, the portal will cover other areas such as education, health and culture.

A better news is coming, but for legal entities: within maximum 89 days, all companies will be able to present the balance sheets and pay all the fees online.

According with the World Bank, Romania has currently one of the most bureaucratic tax administrations in the world.

If on December 25 the portal will be really launched , then we could say that we are witnessing a great step that Romania is doing towards information technology and, implicitly, to improve the communication between the State and its custumers, the taxpayers.

Starting with October 2009, Mirela Dinu became the new coordinator of finance and accounting department of Ascent Group office in Bucharest.

Mirela graduated the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest, Management and Business Administration specialization. Her professional experience includes 5 years in developing projects as economist and accountant for important companies from the Romanian and foreig financial market. In all these years Mirela has developed activities of management, financial reporting and economic analysis.

Many entrepreneurs who wanted to apply until now on projects funded by EU have been discouraged by the lack of pre-financing. So far entrepreneurs received a pre-financing of 10-20% which was calculated from the co-financed amount, which extended to approximately 50% of the project.

Now, the entrepreneurs can receive from start 30% from the value of projects financed by European Union money.
The only problem entrepreneurs will still be facing is the difficulty of receiving loans from the banks for running the projects.

The companies that ask the VAT reinbursment from the Romanian state still have to recover about 911 billion euros, almost 3.827 billion lei. Between February and August the state has returned 1.69 billion euros (7.10 billion lei) according to NAFA data.

The largest peak of the payment was recorded in August when the Government returned 1.197 billion lei (285 million euros).

The monthly reimbursement is made at three fixed terms, i.e.: on 4th, 24th and 29th of each month and the outstanding debts will be paid within 45 days, as the former premier Emil Boc declared at the end of June.

NAFA President, Sorin Blejnar, said that the National Agency for Fiscal Administration (NAFA) will pay in October approximately one third of the amounts outstanding to companies for VAT refunds. So, over 2,700 companies were about to recover the VAT from the state last month.

What is more important? The position you have in a company or the salary?
The fact that on our business card is written manager or director, or the hundreds of euros with which we can get the car or the house of your dreams?

Normally a good salary comes with an important position. But this assumption is not generally valid. It may happened to have a satisfactory salary and a less pleasant position. So, how many of us put into balance the importance of the money and of the position? And, if so, what is the result?

When the leitmotif of the current economic context has become “cost reduction / cost optimization”, an important solution for any company that wants to survive on the market is to outsource certain services that are not related to its core activity, such as: IT services, finance & accounting services, legal and human resources: recruitment, personnel leasing, training, payroll services and personnel administration.

Why is outsourcing an important solution to reduce and optimize costs?

I tried to illustrate below some of the main arguments:

Meal tickets can be offered to employees by any kind of company, they are tax deductible and exempt from taxes and social charges.

If so far, including the month of August 2009, in Romania the value of a meal ticket was 8.48 lei/month, starting with September 2009, a ticket will have the value of 8.72 lei.

In the Official Gazette nr.547 from the 6th of August 2009, was published the Order of the Ministry of Labour, Family and Social Protection (MMFPS) no. 1.444/2009 for establishing the nominal value of a ticket for the second half of 2009, which approves the new value of the ticket since September 1, 2009.

It is good to know that the law 142/1998 who regulates the meal tickets regime provides the twice a year indexation of the value of these vouchers. The nominal value of the meal tickets is indexed every six months with the consumer price index of alimentary goods.

The Romanian Government published on 23^rd of July 2009 the implementing rules of the Emergency Ordinance 92/1009 for postponing the payment of unpaid tax obligations on time, due to the effects of economic and financial crisis, determining the framework within which companies may benefit from delaying the payment of the taxes. The provisions of GEO no. 92/2009 shall apply until 30^rd of June 2010.

The legal provisions refer to the payment of the tax obligations administered by ANAF: taxes, fees, contributions and other amounts due to general budget, and increases for the delay in respect thereof.

Conditions for the benefit of payment postponing

To qualify for postponing the payment of the taxes, taxpayers must fulfil the following cumulative conditions:

The UE unemployment rate reached a value-record of 8.9% in June 2009, being the highest level of the last four years, informs Eurostat, European Statistics Institute.

In May, the unemployment rate reached 8.8%, while in the euro zone was registered 9.3%. In June, the value registered the record of 9.4%. The 9.4% represents for this region the highest level in the last ten years.

In numbers, the EU unemployed rate in June has exceeded 21.5 million people, aş much as the Romanian population count. Of this number, nearly 14.9 million people without a job were registered in the euro area. Compared with June 2008, the number of unemployed people increased by 5.02 million in the EU and 3.17 million in the euro area. The countries with the lowest unemployment rates recorded in June were in Netherlands (3.3%) and Austria (4.4%) and the highest were recorded in Spain (18.1%) Latvia (17.2%) and Estonia (17%).

As the global economic crisis was not enough for our economic situation, 2009 dealt a hard blow to all Romanian companies that are income tax payers, introducing a flat rate tax starting with 1^st of May.

Due to this new legal provisions, each legal person has to pay a mandatory minimum income tax. In more concrete and less formal terms, “you must pay, no matter what”. The reason why is very simple in the opinion of the people who proposed and voted this tax application law:

With the publication of economic data for the 2^nd quarter of 2009 we find that all the countries of Eastern Europe were hit by the crisis, with deeper decreases in the economy than countries in Western, Southern or Northern Europe.

Economic data for Q2 2009 compared to Q2 2008 reflects a dramatic decrease in the economy of the Baltic countries (the largest reductions in Europe) positioning first Lithuania with a decrease in the economy of 22.6%, followed by Latvia with 18.2% and Estonia with 16.6%. Place 4 among the most affected economies is occupied by Romania with a decrease of 8.8% followed by Hungary with 7.4%, 5.3% in Slovakia, the Czech Republic with 4.9% and Bulgaria with 4.8%.

The decreasing trend of the economy is followed by another important country in Eastern Europe whether it is not a member of the European Union, namely Ukraine, reporting a decrease of 18% in Q2.

Ascent Group supports this year, as partner, the START Internship program, developed in Romania by Junior Achievement.

In today’s labor market, students are hardly dreaming of a career and graduates have already entered into the race for getting a job. But their success depends very much on the practical skills and knowledge they learned. And unfortunately Universities in Romania offers still too few opportunities for students to get in contact with what is happening in the concrete business.

Technical unemployment was until recently a concept included in the Romanian Labor Code. After various legislative changes, however, the term “technical unemployment” was removed, and his place was taken by the expressions “suspension of employment” or “a temporary interruption of employment”. However, in common language, the phrase” technical unemployment” is still used when we want to refer to such interruption or temporary suspension of employment contracts.

Regarding the payment of salaries and social contributions during such period, the Government is trying to help the employers in this period, through the Emergency Ordinance no. 28/2009 published in 25 March 2009:

When an investor decides to start a business in our region, he usually can choose between a few countries: if they want to choose a country from the European Union, then they will most likely choose between Romania and Bulgaria, the last countries who joined the EU and also the countries with the lowest labour cost among the EU countries. In case they want to choose a country that is not an EU member, then Serbia and the Republic of Moldova seam to be the 2 best options.

However it is pretty difficult to make a choice in the end, given that each of these countries have advantages and disadvantages. So I proposed to make an overview of the main elements that take into account when an investor decides to start a business in one of these countries.

First, I tried to group in a comparative table the main types of fees and taxes, and the costs that an investor must bear in each of the 4 analyzed countries. Please see them below:

From the amount of 12.95 billion euros that Romania has borrowed from International Monetary Fund, it already received only 5 billion. The next part of 1.9 billion euros will get into our accounts on September 15.

However, it appears that the compliance with the International Monetary Fund mission is very difficult for Romanian authorities. The IMF evaluations shows that the bank field is going relatively well, but the problem is on fiscal – budgetary policy. In order to make it work we need reforms and to reorganize the social policies, pensions and the salaries law in the public sector.

Signing the agreement with the IMF, the Romanian state has undertaken to take measures to strengthen the public finances, the first measure being the gradual reduction of the budget deficit through strict control of public expenses. Once the IMF mission will visit again Romania and based on their conclusions it will be decided whether to release the next part of loan or not.

A new page of European Union history has been written once with the establishment of the first European institution with responsibilities in terms of monitoring developments in financial and banking markets and reporting the systemic risks.

The European leaders have decided the establishment of a new European institution – the Council for Systemic Risks – in response to the G20 Summit which took place in London, on April 2, when the participants have asked a better monitoring of economies in general and financial and banking markets in particular.

Ascent Group, in cooperation with the partner Jordan Sheppard, is currently deploying intensive efforts to identify the market’s most talented IT professionals.

Our client is a Service Provider for the European Union and the opportunities are aimed at young IT professionals who wish to access interesting and international IT career perspectives (the employer is Belgium based), either at a senior but also a more junior/entry level. Interested professionals can review enclosed a list of currently available positions.

The ability to speak fluently both English and French is essential. The applicants can send their resumes to email

The Governmental Ordinance no. 105/2009 repealed the provisions of Governmental Ordinance no 831/1997 in order to approve the common patterns forms for the financial and accounting activities and for the regulations concerning the way to prepare and use these forms.

Under the new regulations, the companies should consider the fact that the tax receipts issued with electronic tax devices under the Emergency Ordinance 28/1999 are documents that prove the payment and need to be attached to the cash flow register.

Introducing in the accountancy the purchased goods or the expenses made by companies and paid based on tax receipt (cash or card), is possible only if:

1. the company requires an invoice for delivered goods or for the carried out services, having in annex the tax receipts issued by the electronic tax device

or

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Minimis State grants represent one of the best financing solutions for small and medium enterprises. At the end of May the Government increased 20 times the grants schemes to enterprises, from five million to one hundred million, allocating 20 million euros for 2009.

Moreover, the Government also extended the number of companies fields of activity that may require such grants from the state, including mostly manufacturing: the production of textures, clothing, leather processing and footwear production, glass production and articles of paper.

These grants are offered for a period of three consecutive fiscal years, and the projects are supported 100% by the state budget.

Few months ago, the economic crisis was still, in the opinion of many, an excuse for companies to reduce costs, an “over-fed” issue by the press, a pretext for the Government not to increase the salaries in the budgetary sector, etc. Even among those who accepted the existence of a crisis, it dominated the view that it will be like a wave, which will last 5-6 months, will sweep some companies in the way, will sway some imbalances that were obvious to everybody, after which things will return “to normal” just as they were before.

Today no one doubts the reality and the depth of this crisis, that in fact affects all countries and all branches of economy at the same time, that it will be a lasting crisis and will take years for the things to return as they were in the summer of 2008. And in some fields maybe it will not ever return to those peaks.

article published in Tonica magazine

How many times dind’t you want to escape, even for one single day, from the crowded roadway from your job office and back, anyhow you were traveling: with your own car, subway, bus? How many times you dreamed to escape, at least for one single day, from the morning strict schedule of your office that you can not violate but extremely flexible in the evening?

And how many times you have wanted to be able to transform the perfectly ironing clothes, the dress perfectly matching with the makeup, the elegant hair or the heavy atmosphere from the office with a light toilet – pajamas or robe and with a nice music loud enough for a perfect relax ?

Seems like a dream, but today’s technology allows us to enjoy and to forget, whenever we want, the never ending timetable from the job, the crowd and the enforced dress code, if we decide to work from home.

On 18th of June 2009 took place in Bulgaria, Ruse the „No Borders” event, a Romanian – Bulgarian bilateral business meeting organized by Ascent Group in partnership with UNPR – National Union of Romanian Employers, BRCCI – Romanian–Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the magazines Manager Bulgaria and Consulting Review Romania.

Bulgaria and Romania, two neighboring countries separated by borders several decades that remained now only symbolic, gathered in No Borders event all their business potential and colaboration interest. No Borders event aimed to encourage the cross-border cooperation and investments, to facilitate the neighboring market acces and to stimulate business partnerships for both countries companies.

Starting with 1st of May 2009 a few important changes of the Romanian Fiscal Code became effective, through the Emergency Ordinance 34/2009. We present below the most important elements that have been changed.

Introduction of the lump tax rate

One of the main news brought by the Emergency Ordinance 34/2009 is reffering to the introduction of a new type of taxing, the lump tax rate.

In this respect, was introduced for the Romanian legal entities, payers of the taxable profit, the compulsoriness to determine the quarterly tax by comparing the quarterly income tax with the minimum quarterly lump tax rate and the income payment at the higher amount.

To apply the lump tax rate, the amounts corresponding to the minimum tax, determined according to total income registered on December 31st 2008, are: