Romania's new excises, still under review after lower exchange rate

Romanian authorities are still pondering on changing the formula based on which excises are being calculated. Finance Minister Ioana Petrescu refrained from saying whether excises would be calculated using yesterday's reference exchange rate announced by the European Central Bank, which would take excises down. The ECB announced a rate of RON 4.409 per EUR, which is below the RON 4.4485 per EUR that has been used for calculating excises so far. This year, Romania’s Government chose to use the reference exchange rate in 2012, which was higher than the one in 2013, and added the highest inflation rate to the formula, the one from September 2013. So excises ended up being paid at an exchange rate of RON 4.73 per EUR. The new excise should be enforced on January 1, 2015, and the state has until then to figure out how it wants to calculate it. editor@romania-insider.com