Romanian FinMin: All public expenses are “under question mark”

The budget execution is essential for financing the public expenses, Romanian finance minister Florin Citu said at Realitatea Plus on Wednesday evening.

If the state collects lower revenues than planned, financing the investments, and paying the salaries and the pensions will be problematic, he added, according to local Economica.net.

Prime minister Ludovic Orban tried to come with some reassurance on Thursday, saying that "the money for wages, pensions and investments will be secured with priority."

The finance minister said at Realitatea Plus that the funds for the 40% rise in pensions, scheduled to take place in September, have been included in the budget planning recently re-drafted. However, he added that "everything depends on the budget execution," namely on the revenues to the budget.

Furthermore, he said that "all the expenses have a question mark on them." Even the payment of pensions as they are as of today will be problematic, "if we have a bad budget execution," Citu stated.

On a much more optimistic note, PM Ludovic Orban assured that Romania's economic contraction would be followed by a robust recovery next year. Based on this, PM Orban ruled out the option of sending public servants into technical unemployment, an idea he had launched himself less than two weeks ago, Wall-street.ro reported. Orban said this is not a valid option anymore "because we are [already] approaching the final of the state of emergency."

(Photo source: Inquam Photos/Octav Ganea)