Romania’s finance minister claims 2019 budget planning is ready

Romania’s finance minister Eugen Teodorovici announced on January 12, in a TV show, that the budget planning for 2019 was already drafted and will be sent to Parliament when the lawmakers return from recess on February 1. Furthermore, he confirmed that the budget deficit will shrink this year to 2.5% of GDP, local Hotnews.ro reported. Teodorovici also told Reuters that Romania’s budget deficit was about 2.8% of the GDP in 2018. The finance minister and other government officials previously announced a deficit of 2.9% or around, for 2018. The downward correction (to 2.8% mentioned in the Reuters interview) might be a result of on-going addition of the revenues and expenditures for the month of December but more likely an effect of one more upward revision of the nominal GDP. The statistics office INS has just released on January 12 revised Q3 GDP data and announced a higher deflator for January-September (6.5%, up from 6.2% previously estimated). As regards the 2019 budget planning, it assumes 5.5% GDP growth for this year -- nearly twice as much as the growth estimated by the analysts of the largest local bank Banca Transilvania (2.8%). Romanian Govt. to complete 2019 budget planning no sooner than end-January editor@romania-insider.com (photo source: Gov.ro)