As the privatisation Law may be amended, a new dispute between Romanian authorities and international financial institutions (IMF and the World Bank) might arise.
The Privatisation Authority (APAPS) is planning to amend the privatisation Law and is already working on this initiative, Iacob Zelenco, State Secretary within APAPS said on Wednesday, during discussions with Deputies of the Economic Policy Commission.
"It is not about a disagreement regarding the changes we have planned. It simply revolves around the very idea of amending the law," Zelenco said.
He added that the financial institutions had expressed their concern that the privatisation process would slow down if the law were changed.
APAPS next week will present a new variant for the Law on minority shareholders protection. Zelenco said that the new law was drawn in compliance with the comments of both the strategic and the minority shareholders.
Moreover, APAPS is to meet them next week in order to present them with the new law draft, Zelenco said.
APAPS is currently involved in 12,000 lawsuits regarding the breach of contractual clauses. The most frequent defaults are the impossibility to pay the instalments or meet the investment deadlines, Zelenco said.
He specified that the situation gets even more difficult when the Privatisation Authority has to resort to the Supreme Court of Justice in order to cancel a privatisation contract, which takes a long time.
According to Zelenco, a legal frame is needed for APAPS to intervene in the post-privatisation process, when the Authority is bound through contractual clauses.
"I think one solution would be to stop voluntary liquidations. We need preventive activity in order to stop these companies' decline," Zelenco said. He considers that a bill on which the jurists from the Ministry are currently working should be endorsed.
The State Secretary specified that most privatisation contracts were concluded so that APAPS should not be able to intervene, as the clauses are not very clear.
For instance, he said, one contract stipulated that investments should end on April 31, while April has only 30 days.
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