Publicly owned companies to be subject to financial monitoring

State- or municipality-owned companies and legal entities in public or majority public ownership will be subject to financial monitoring under a recently adopted Government regulation, Info-Prim Neo reports. The measure aims to strengthen financial discipline and optimize the use of public property. The monitoring will be carried out by the Ministry of Finance at government-funded entities, and by local administrations at companies owned by municipalities and administrative-territorial units. The monitoring will be conducted following analyses of financial reports submitted to the National Statistics Bureau, information from the Public Property Register, data from the tax service and other agencies, as well as by checking documents against each other. The financial monitoring is supposed to enable potential investors and others concerned to get access to information concerning the financial situation of a given company, its key indicators and the flow of capital, the composition of assets and its income sources, etc. In addition, this information could be used when drafting the State Budget and the local ones, as well as in assessing public property. According to the Ministry of Economy and Trade’s Agency for Public Property, in 2007 the money transferred in dividends by government-owned enterprises to the state budget totaled 207.8 million lei. At present, there are about 500 legal entities in public or majority public ownership.