Romanian prime minister Ilie Bolojan and deputy PM Dragos Anastatsiu, as head of the working group, announced in a press conference on July 22 the plans for streamlining the corporate governance in state owned enterprises (SOE) – one of the two packages of reforms (besides the local administration reforms) expected to be delivered in an initial form by the end of the month.
The package of reforms, expected by the end of July, complements the first fiscal corrective package, providing sustainability to the fiscal consolidation through its expected long-term results.
PM Bolojan announced a memorandum that will be on the agenda of this week’s government meeting, which will prepare the amendments to the legislation on corporate governance, with the final goal of improving the management of companies. Some of the provisions envisaged by the amendments are included as targets and milestones in the National Relaunch and Resilience Plan (PNRR).
The first step announced by the prime minister regards full transparency regarding the management of state-owned enterprises. He promised all data would be released by the agency charged with monitoring SOEs, AMEPIP, on July 23. The set of data should include who manages these companies, what their earnings are, what their performance indicators are, and all the economic data.
A second step concerns streamlining the management of companies in terms of size and incentives. This will be achieved through legislative amendments, both in terms of reducing the number of members but also in terms of capping their earnings, PM Bolojan announced.
A very important element is the performance indicators, the PM stressed. These indicators, in the coming period, will be reviewed by each ministry in order to verify whether the indicators that underlie the current contracts are relevant or superficial.
Where needed, these indicators will be revised. The management will either accept the new performance indicators or the government will take steps to enforce the new performance indicators – PM Bolojan said, touching a delicate topic.
In an interview with Digi24 later on the same day, minister of economy Radu Miruta admitted that enforcing new performance indicators depends on each minister as it requires commitment and the use of all legal provisions available. In some cases, the managing boards in SOEs have signed four-year contracts that can not be scrapped overnight. But holding responsible management members for the losses incurred by the companies by past decisions could be a procedure of last resort, he explained.
iulian@romania-insider.com
(Photo source: Gov.ro)
Leave a Reply