15 years ago, many thought the enterprise named Ziarul Financiar was an impossible mission.
It is ideas and faith that drive people and organizations forward in any business, maybe less so than the indicators in the business plans. This is the case of Ziarul Financiar, too, the press enterprise born with the mission of providing support to the Romanian entrepreneurship, to the business called Romania. It is what is written on ZF’s nameplate: “Everything for business. Everything is business” (Totul pentru business. Totul este business”)
And that is what we have been doing every day in these 15 years. We assumed support of those who create value in Romania through their ideas, work and perseverance. Value that begins with a dream, a business plan maybe written on the corner of the kitchen table. A dream, a plan that today means millions of jobs, millions of such dreams meant to last.
Because entrepreneurs build dreams as scientists find solutions to their problems in their sleep and composers commit musical notes drizzling from another dimension to paper.
15 years later, business class finds self-awareness
Ziarul Financiar has been and continues to be the mirror of the business environment and the voice of the entrepreneurial class in Romania in all these years.
Born in the trying years ’98 and ’99, when Romania was supposed to catch up on all fronts it had been lagging behind on after 1990, Ziarul Financiar was a publication ahead of its time.
Slowly, the years of economic growth cleared a path towards development for Romania even if it came at the rather high cost of uprooting 10% of its population and transferring ownership over strategic assets to foreign companies.
Yet the gain in all these years was not an increase in the gross domestic product from EUR37 billion to EUR140 billion, but the creation of an entrepreneurial class, of a core of people who took their destiny in their own hands to build a different Romania.
The Romanian private companies established since 1998 have reached revenues of hundreds of millions of euros and created millions of jobs.
The privatization of Dacia, BRD, Sidex, Petrom and BCR meant strategic decisions that pulled Romania out from the outskirts of investment. Foreign investment was EUR5 billion in 1998; it 2013 it stands at EUR50 billion.
Exports stood at EUR7.2 billion in 1998, in 2013 they are estimated at EUR48 billion.
In 1998, there were only five modern stores, now the retail network includes 1,000 stores.
In 1998, only 10,000 Romanians were earning more than EUR1,000 in gross amount per month, now more than 180,000 of them are earning as much. In 1998, the average net wage was EUR78 per month, now it is EUR360.
In 1998, only 29,000 homes were built a year, in 2008 the number had gone up to 67,000 only to fall to some 42,000 in 2012.
In 1998, 1% of the households had a computer, now 60% of them do and 56% have Internet service.
In 1998, only 49% of the households had a washing machine, now 78% do.
Some of these last 15 years have been difficult. Half of 15 years were crisis years: 1998 and 1999 at first, then 2009-2013, after 2008 brought the most serious global financial crisis since 1929.
However, the entrepreneurial class grew through its own ideas and strength, pushing the Romanian society towards prosperity.
Along with us, Ziarul Financiar, the business class discovered its self-awareness and the need to have a strong voice in the public arena.
“15 years of progress is a good start in any evolution process. Ziarul Financiar broke all the molds of the classic journalism: it shows what the trends are and models the public perception of people and companies. (…) Reaching maturity takes a lot of responsibility, of demanding a lot from ourselves and constant efforts to remain professional,” says Andreas Treichl, chief executive officer of Erste Group Bank, the owner of BCR.
“To me, Ziarul Financiar has always been more than an executive directory of the daily economy news. It is exceptional in how it brings out the essential problems of the economy and of the business environment and thus puts pressure on every government,” says Marius Melesteu, general manager of Strauss (coffee producer) for Central and Eastern Europe.
“The message you convey to the political class, about protecting the business environment as the first requirement for sustainable development is important,” says Mihai Marcu, chairman of MedLife, private healthcare provider.
“I believe ZF, as we’ve grown accustomed to calling the printed edition, is a partner of the business community, the mirror of the business environment. I have grown professionally at the same time as the newspaper,” says Kinga Daradics, country chairman of MOL Romania.
The business class has evolved, the political class has not
The entrepreneurial class of Romania has formed and gained experience under the pressure of competition and performance measurement. This is what the political class has constantly avoided all these years.
Entrepreneurship was only beginning in 1998. The intense privatization in the years after that gave it a chance at life. People doing business back then were mostly former members of the former communist secret police (Securitate) and there were also the few foreign companies that had entered the country until then.
Today a new generation of entrepreneurs and executives has come to power in business. The Club of Business Magazin, which rewards young entrepreneurs and executives every year, already numbers 800 people building Romania’s future day by day.
The business class has acquired competence, its actions are guided by corporate governance ethics and measures performance using clear parameters. The crisis steeled it. It is responsible for millions of jobs. It has vision.
On the other hand, the political class has not developed any competencies, and is less capable of handling power than it was 15 years ago. The political class has become the mold to create the ‘new man’ in the Romanian administration, who comes in packs with every change of government and whose sole purpose is to plunder the public funds.
The value the entrepreneurial class and the more than 4 million employees create is wasted by those who take turns in managing the state budget.
EUR24 billion – that is the Transport Ministry budget in the last 15 years, and it has only built 435 kilometers of highways.
EUR20 billion, that is what the Romanian government had available from the EU in 2007-2013 but only attracted EUR5 billion.
The political class has not self-regulated governance in a market economy, it failed in corruption, undermining its credibility to manage a country.
The political class has not defined its mission, has not assumed any strategic vision and is not offering Romania any plans for the future today. The political class lacks entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurial Romania and welfare Romania
We have two Romanias today. One is the Romania that generates value – private companies and their employees, still too few for the added value they create to put the country where it should be.
With only 4.3 million employees out of a population of 20 million, and only 3.3 million of them working for private companies, Romania has half the employees compared to total population Hungary and Czech Republic have.
With 5.3 million retirees and a social security budget deficit of EUR3 billion a year, Romania is living today the drama of a society forced to run a budget deficit not for investments but to pay pensions.
The ratio of entrepreneurial Romania and welfare Romania is unacceptable.
The political class does not participate in creating value, it wastes it, bribing a welfare Romania in order to stay in power.
When the GDP was growing in 2005-2008, the political class did nothing but swell the costs of welfare Romania, which has led to an almost complete shutdown of the economy’s engines and to massive indebtedness in the last five years after the crisis of 2008.
A debt Romania will not be able to repay when [tax] evasion accounts for half of its budget (EUR20 billion) and the economy is suffocated by taxes and it is only right that we should be looking at Greece’s fate over the coming years.
The entrepreneurial class no longer deludes itself that politicians can be its partners.
Today, Romania is a country that cannot find direction.
Possible mission
You are self-aware, you are aware of the power you represent.
Romania needs vision, strategy, and competent administration. Romania needs economic growth of at least 4% or 5% a year to survive and be something other than a country on welfare from Europe.
The business community needs to understand that if it does not express itself in the arena of power, the political class will not treat it with the respect it is due as the main creator of value in Romania.
Romanian entrepreneurs, get involved because everything depends on you, or else the Romania you dreamt and planned might no longer exist in the future!
You have got us, those who embarked upon an impossible mission 15 years ago.
You have the lion’s power!
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)