The Minister of European Investments and Funds, Marcel Bolosh, said on Antena 3 on Saturday for the first time that in order to balance the budget and fulfill the tasks undertaken by the PNRR, the government can revise the salaries of public servants. or even reduce their number.

“Now we have expenses for salaries in the budget system of about 110 billion lei. The condition that we have in the National Recovery and Resilience Plan is related to resiliency, having all the experience and, let’s say, this procedure of negotiations on the reform of special pensions and the way in which the European Commission for Resilience raises the issue of these I said possible options , that we are going either to revise salaries in the budget system, or to a possible reduction in the number of budget employees, but the coalition will decide this at the right time.

The government has started to cut spending by 20 billion lei, which was confirmed by Finance Minister Adrian Cachiu after revealing that they made a mistake in the 2023 budget, as HotNews.ro also revealed.

Bolosh says that the latest statements that they have to cut costs by 20 billion lei will easily lead to these reforms that the Commission is demanding.

“The Minister of Finance stated this, and of course here the Commission is very careful when analyzing such statements and such measures, because it is an additional argument for the Commission to ask Romania to carry out reforms, that it also has three consecutive reforms. , that special pensions, that the general pension system and wage reform in the budget system. And from this point of view, as we know, they have the terms of the fourth quarter for the reform of special pensions, in the first quarter – the reform of general pensions, and in the second quarter – reform of the wage system in the budget sector,” Bolosh said on Antena 3.

• Romania’s economy is slowing down / Companies are paying less and less to the budget / Internal documents of the Government

Income growth has slowed / High risks for Romania

If in previous years we had a greater growth in tax collections (inflation played an important role last year – it helped the state a lot), then this year this phenomenon subsided.

The increase in collected taxes is 22.3 percentage points lower than the increase recorded as a ratio of activity for the first two months of 2022 and 2021.

In terms of amounts, there was a decrease in the growth rate of revenues from 11.688 billion lei (difference 2022 compared to 2021) to 4.822 billion lei (difference 2022 compared to 2022), i.e. 6.866 billion lei lower.

The difference is almost entirely observed in the 10 largest types of economic activity as a share of total receipts exclusively from economic activity.

Romania’s exchange rate risks are also particularly high as we face twin deficits: a current account deficit and a budget deficit.

• The Ionescu family and the 20 billion hole in the budget