Govnet Conferences organized on February 9 another exclusive Power Breakfast on State Aid, focusing on practical aspects regarding the implementation of State Aid Schemes in Romania.

It was a great opportunity for potentially eligible companies to find more about financing of investments from non-reimbursable funds directly from the people involved in the process: representatives of the Directorate for State Aid department in the Ministry of Finance, representatives of companies that already benefited from state aid and consultants that assisted investment projects in the past.

The pay increase passed on Monday by Parliament will determine a growth of Romania's budgetary deficit to rd 3.5pct of the Gross Domestic Product in 2017, way higher than the International Monetary Fund's recommendation of 2pct of the GDP, on Wednesday said IMF resident representative for Romania and Bulgaria Alejandro Hajdenberg.  This will trigger a cut in investment spending or additional taxes, added Hajdenberg quoted by Agepress. 

Within the IMF mission of March 2016, and also based on the subsequent updates, he said, IMF reached the conclusion that given the circumstances Romania's deficit will exceed 3pct of the GDP in 2017 - rd 3.2pct of the GDP. After this pay increase, maintaining the deficit at 3pct of the GDP would be harder, Hajdenberg told AGERPRES on Wednesday, adding that the IMF estimates a net impact of the pay increase of 0.3 - 0.4 percentage points of the GDP.

Compared with the same period of last year, the turnover of the industry sector both for domestic and external market decreased in nominal terms by four percent shows the monthly report issued by the National Institute of Statistics. In July 2016, the turnover in industry, per total (domestic and non-domestic market), decreased in nominal terms both compared to the previous month by 4.0% and compared to the corresponding month of the previous year by 3.3%.

After losing an estimated 500 million EUR investment from Daimler in Sebes for new a engine plant with 1500 employees, Ministry of Economy, Costin Borc, reveals that Romania might not have been in the cards from the beginning: "The main condition for Daimler's investment was that the production to reach in a maximum of 17 hours from that factory's gate to the plant in Bremen, and from this point of view, Sebes was not a serious competitor for the engine plant, because of the logistic chains."

Deloitte’s “Deleveraging Europe 2015-2016 Survey” highlighted that Romania counts among the most active countries in the region when it comes to the non-performing loans market (“NPLs”), with estimated sales (including transactions ongoing at the end of the year) of 2.5 billion EUR last year. According to the Survey, a number of transactions initiated in late 2015 remain ongoing and will be a key driver for 2016 market trend. However, failed deals are not helping the market develop and investors retain a healthy skepticism regarding the likelihood of deals completing. Thus, establishing a servicing platform for secured portfolios is a key concern for many international investors.

Local courier services firm Sprint Curier announced a strategic partnership with Urgent Cargus. Within this partnership, starting the 11th of April, the internal deliveries in Romania will be taken over by Urgent Cargus, while Sprint Curier will focus on international deliveries. The announcement only says the two companies joined forces to provide clients with an extensive delivery network and a better pickup process and delivery of parcels, not saying if the company was acquired by Urgent Cargus.

Polish Innova Capital Investments Fund has sold the entire shares package of Provus Group (altogether with Provus Service Provider, Romcard and Supercard Solutions & Services), the biggest payment processing center in Romania and one of the largest in Europe to German services supplier Wirecard, for 32 million EUR.

With a total of 114 employees, Provus is Romania’s leading payment processing and technological service provider. The payment provider supports companies in outsourcing acquiring and card processing, e-commerce payment transactions and point-of-sale (POS) operations. Its customer base includes major Romanian banks in addition to significant telecommunications and retail players. In addition, Provus has worked with the Romanian government in the digitisation of health and payment cards. Provus was set up in 2001 and ever since it has been present on the Romanian market with card processing transactions, card personalization, as well as retail services. The group has 114 employees and over time, it has served clients like Sensiblu, MOL Romania, Cora Profi, Metro Cash&Carry Romania, but also local branches of OTP, Unicredit, and Societe Generale.