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PM Ponta: Public pay law, Gov't priority for second half of 2015
Prime Minister Victor Ponta, the national leader of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), major party at rule, said Monday that one of the Government's big projects for the second half of the year is public pay law in order to establish a normal hierarchy of values.
"In the second half of the year we have a second big project, the public pay law. We have to reconfigure the normal hierarchy of values. There must be a ranking order and it is not normal for the country's president, the prime minister and the chairs of Parliament to be paid less that who knows what employee in a militarised department or Government-run company, because there is no other country in Europe where something like this happens. We demand high performance of those who head institutions, but in exchange we believe nothing else is needed. At the same time, I want to believe that the public servants — and here I mean all those in the public sector — doctors, teachers, firefighters, soldiers, police officers — of whom we have to demand very much, but we also have to offer them a carrier plan, safety," Ponta told a meeting of the PSD National Standing Bureau.
He added that when all the data related to the first quarter of the year are out, the Government have to know what to pick between cutting the Value-Added Tax from 24 per cent to 20 per cent and cutting VAT on agricultural produce only to 9 per cent.
"We cannot do both now, but one of them can surely be done now, immediately as we have the first quarter results. I want us to think together about what is best for the entire economy and how we can best deliver a very clear message that people have worked for three years and they have to feel the fruit of their labour," said Ponta.
He pointed out that "this government of the Social Liberal Union (USL), in which PSD is a very important presence," has managed to carry through the most important project of the early year, of the first half of the year, the Tax Code and the Code of Tax Procedure.
"I am asking all our colleagues in the Senate and then in the Chamber of Deputies to please hold debates and have it passed. The new Tax Code and Code of Tax Procedure will do a lot of good to Romania — jobs, economic growth — and I am increasingly more convinced of that as I have seen the propaganda getting smaller: they were a bit dizzy again and since yesterday they have been explaining to us how bad the Tax Code and the Code of Tax Procedure are. Had the National Liberal Party (PNL) made them, they would have been good, but since the PSD made them they are allegedly bad. I say they are exceedingly good because they are good to Romania," said Ponta.