Romania's ministries to publish information on management, earnings of state-owned companies

Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan announced on Tuesday that the ministries in Romania will soon make sure more information regarding state-owned companies, including who manages them and what their earnings are, will soom be made public.He thanked Deputy Prime Minister Dragos Anastasiu, coordinator of the working group, who prepared a series of amendments to legislation on corporate governance."The memorandum will be on the agenda of this week's government meeting," the prime minister told a news conference at the Government House.He added that the measure would secure transparency of the management of state-owned companies."We agreed that all the ministries should make sure to make public all the data that are necessary to know who manages these companies, what earnings they have, what their indicators are and all the economic data that give a mirror as faithful as possible regarding those who lead and under what conditions they run these companies. I don't think this is to shame those who lead them, that the data is public, neither in terms of earnings nor in terms of performance, but a thing of normalcy that we will do moving forward," said Bolojan.He added that an important part of good governance is the correct management of state-owned companies in Romania. Their good administration is "one of the most important" elements of the second package of reform measures, he said."Considering that the management of these companies has a very important economic impact - in certain areas, such as energy, having a very high impact or in other areas being relevant actors - any gain in their administration is an important gain for our country and for the national budget. That means that any reduction in the subsidies we give to companies that need subsidies is an extra saving. Any increase in the quality of the services that these companies offer to citizens is an additional service. Any additional profit they make, by reducing expenses, by controlling costs, means a greater investment capacity or taxes, which are additionally collected to the national budget," said Bolojan.   He added that, as part of a package of measures to reform Romania's state-owned companies, changes will be made to the legislation to cut the number of members on the boards of directors, as well as capping earnings."A second basic component is related to the management side of the companies, which will be solved by changes in legislation, both in terms of reducing the number of members, but also in terms of capping some earnings. There is a situation in which, practically abusing legal provisions and without a serious control of the way in which the managers of these companies and those who are part of the boards of directors apply the legislation, from the reasonable values of earnings with which they entered when they won these nominations, the maximum limits have been reached in a relatively short period, which, rightly, has created dissatisfaction, both in public opinion, but also in terms of their actual administration. Given that their emoluments increase a lot, without that being reflected in the performance of the companies or services, it is obvious that it is a measure that practically abuses the legislation in force," Bolojan told a joint news conference at the Government House with Deputy Prime Minister Dragos Anastasiu.He added that ,moving forward, performance indicators will also be modified."Those indicators will be reviewed by each ministry, in order to verify whether the indicators underlying the current contracts are relevant or perfunctory. Certainly, in many places, the indicators are not relevant. And, then, there will be two situations: either the new indicators will be accepted by those who run these companies, which means that they are people of good faith who understand that what was will no longer be and must offer a plus of performance in the management of state assets, or, given that they will not accept these indicators from the start, it means that there are problems related to their professionalism, their good intentions, their dedication and we will use all the legal provisions at our disposal to impose these performance indicators or those who do not accept them to leave," said Bolojan.