* The arrears of six of the ten state owned companies watched by the IMF continued to increase in the first quarter
One of the tough measures that was agreed upon with the IMF, which was intended to rebalance the public budget deficit was to drastically reduce the outstanding arrears of major state owned companies.
For this reason, in January, the government devised a plan intended to help reduce the arrears of state owned companies that proved to be literal black holes for the state budget.
Ten state owned companies, most of them controlled by the Ministry of the Economy and the Ministry of Transports, went under the surveillance of the IMF experts.
The Romanian authorities had made the commitment to reorganize the highly indebted companies in order to make them profitable, as well as to lower the budget deficit, which is the "hot button" topic of the moment, as the alternatives are either expanding the tax base or raising taxes.
However, this was four months ago, and the problem has only gotten worse since then.
Laying off staff didn"t seem to help, as six of the ten companies that were being monitored by the IMF saw their arrears increase in the first quarter of 2010
* "The black holes" have gotten larger: arrears increased by 48.9 million lei
One such example is Compania Naţională a Huilei (CNH - the National Coal Company), whose arrears to the state budget increased by 39 million lei in the first quarter (around 10 million Euros), as demonstrated by the lists of major corporate taxpayers with arrears to the National Tax Administration, on December 31st 2009 and March 31st, 2009.
At the end of last year, the arrears of the National Coal Company amounted to 1.539 billion lei, and after the first quarter of 2010, its arrears had increased to 1.578 billion lei.
Another example (this time we"re referring
