* Frequent hurdles for the state"s investment fund
* The optimistic version: The National Investment Fund could take another seven months to become operational
* Seven months, six weeks and five days...
The Government"s major project - The National Investment Fund, pops up every now and again, and a few months later we are told it is still in an "incipient" stage....
Seven months...
The idea of a sovereign fund for the state first came up seven months ago, in September 2009, but the break-up of the PDL- PSD government caused it to be left to collect dust somewhere in the drawers of the Government. The plan was to put up all of the state"s holdings in one big investment fund (with the initial name scheduled to be the Romanian Investment Fund) which would allow the stakes to be sold on the stock market, help the companies which were facing troubles and supporting the Government"s economic and financial policies. The fund would have become the largest investor on the Romanian capital market, with the added benefit that unlike public institutions, it could sell its stakes far easier, and it would have offered real information about the economy and companies which had potential. The initial financing for the creation of the fund was supposed to come from CEC Bank and the NBR"s forex reserves
* ...six weeks...
The new Boc government rediscovered the project, but (even though this was only done on a conceptual level) it resized it, to only include the stakes of the Ministry of the Economy and of AVAS. As a result, it changed its name, which also followed several steps. At first it was supposed to be called the National Investment Fund. As the initials of its Romanian name were the same as the ones of the infamous FNI mutual fund, the Government quickly changed its name by swapping the last two words around. Which would change its
