Băsescu blames foreign investors for using black market workforce and not paying taxes

The President of Romania thursday blamed the heads of the biggest local companies during a debate on the reboot of the Romanian economy for having turned the failure to pay taxes or the hiring of black market workforce into a usual practice for the business environment.
Before almost 200 businesspeople, foreign investors and managers of the biggest local companies, President Băsescu yesterday sat at the same table as Mariana Gheorghe, the head of the biggest company in Romania, Petrom, and Dominic Bruynseels, BCR's chief executive; this was one of the few opportunities he has ever given businesspeople to ask him questions. They, however, were not really incisive in their discussion with the head of state.
Jean Valvis, the Greek-born Swiss businessman, who has built two powerful Romanian brands, Dorna and LaDorna Lactate, told the President that predictability and strategy were what every investor naturally needed.
"We ask for strategies and would like to be your partners in devising them. I have been asking for an agricultural strategy that Romania does not have for 16 years now, a sector for which it should have a long-term strategy," Valvis said during the "Partnership for growth in 2011" conference organised by Ziarul Financiar and Foreign Investor Council yesterday.
Băsescu replied by saying that people frequently demanded a development strategy for Romania and he, in his position as president of the state, was not in favour of creating a new development strategy because Romania already had a medium and long-term plan agreed upon, which could be seen in the seven operational programmes and in the funding for agriculture.