PM Citu: Budget close to its final form, starts fixing recent years’ legislative anomalies

 

"I know that the budget is still a subject of public debate. We are very close to giving it a final form. We are still discussing with the budget managers what I've been asking for all the time, those measures to reduce spending. They are starting to come in and you will see them in the public space as well. We also have an evolution of the wage expenses in the public sector in the period 2016 - 2020, but I will give a separate presentation on this subject in the coming days," Citu said at the Victoria Palace of Government.

 

"This is not a simple budget blueprint. It's a budget that looks at the period 2021 - 2022, a budget that starts fixing the anomalies introduced in the Romanian law in the last four years. I will give you just one example: wage expenses have doubled between 2016 - 2020 from 57 billion lei a year to 110 billion lei. I don't think that anything else has doubled, there hasn't been a twofold increase in Romania's revenues in the last four years, the economic growth hasn't doubled in this period, but personnel expenditures have doubled. (...) Through this budget we need to reset the structure of the economy, to continue to invest, the investment allocation is higher than last year, the figure last year was a record amount, but the amount this year is even larger. As I said, this budget looks at two years, 2021 - 2022, because the reforms we are implementing in 2021 will have effects in 2022, that is why they must go in tandem," Prime Minister Citu explained.