Among the many benefits of setting up a debt management agency is that it operates outside the political sphere, distancing a country’s funding officials from the vagaries of elections and reshuffles, and minimizing the problems that frequent personnel changes can cause.
Such an agency also brings a professionalism and understanding of the needs of the private sector that many public sector officials might lack.
This, at least, is the theory. On the ground in the Romanian capital Bucharest, though, things seem to play out differently.
In September, Romania’s deputy finance minister and state secretary with responsibility for debt strategy, Dragos Neacsu, was dismissed. A major part of the remit of Neacsu, who joined the ministry from the private sector earlier this year, was to set up Romania’s debt management agency, only the third in central and eastern Europe after those established in Hungary and Slovakia.
It seems that the writing was on the wall for Neacsu once his boss – former public finance minister Ionut Popescu – received his marching orders in August, as his sacking seems primarily connected with the new minister’s desire to bring in his own team.
Neacsu was not the only deputy minister to suffer – six others across various ministries lost their jobs as a result of what prime minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu’s spokeswoman described as a “lack of efficiency”.
It is understandable that the prime minister wants to be seen to be acting decisively in the wake of this summer’s horrific floods, and the possibility of EU membership slipping from 2007 to 2008.
But removing the man widely credited with beginning the long process of turning around Romania’s creaky debt strategy sends the wrong message to the wider market and to Romanian private sector employees who might have been considering a career in the fledgling agency.