BUCHAREST (Romania), November 6 (SeeNews) – Romania’s President Traian Basescu nominated the mayor of one of the Bucharest districts, Liviu Negoita, as prime minister-designate on Friday, two days after parliament rejected his previous nomination.
Negoita, 47, is member of ruling Democrat-Liberal Party, told reporters he has three days to discuss the line-up of his future cabinet with political parties and will present the draft government list to parliament on Monday.
Romania’s parliament rejected on Wednesday the cabinet proposed by previous premier-designate Lucian Croitoru, an advisor to the central bank governor. Basescu nominated Croitoru for the post in mid-October, saying the country needs a premier versed in economic and macroeconomic issues, both at national and international level.
Basescu ignored once again the nomination of the opposition for premier-designate - the Sibiu city mayor Klaus Johannis. Opposition Liberals, Social Democrats and ethnic Hungarian party UDMR control two-thirds of the seats in parliament.
Basescu, who is running for re-election on November 22, by law, can not dissolve parliament or call early general election in the last six months of his term. The winner of the presidential vote can call a general election in December at the earliest, if Liviu Negoita's proposal for a cabinet fails to win parliament approval.
“We consider the news as negative, since we view low chances for the new candidate to be welcomed by the other Parliament parties and for Romania to have a new government before the presidential elections,” Raiffeisen Capital & Investment said in a note to investors.
Romania signed a 20 billion euro ($29.8 billion) aid deal with the IMF, the European Union and the World Bank in March to support its crisis-hit economy. An IMF mission is wrapping up a two-week review of Romania's economic performances under the stand-by agreement on Friday.
The IMF mission will hold a news conference at 1200 GMT.
At the moment the IMF’s two main requirements are the 2010 budget to pass parliament approval by December 10 and the fical responsibility law package to be voted by the year’s end, Basescu told reporters prior to nominating Negoita.
Earlier on Friday local media reported that the IMF will postpone by one month until January the disbursement of a 1.5 billion euro ($19.4 billion) loan tranche under the stand-by arrangement.
Romania is dependent on IMF aid to cover its budget deficit which rose to 4.5% of the projected gross domestic product in the first eight months of 2009.
