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Former PM Dacian Ciolos: Romania needs a "really applicable" uniform pay law
Former Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos says that Romania needs a "really applicable" uniform pay law and not only made "to confound or numb legitimate expectations."
"We particularly need to solve intra- and inter-sectoral inequities," on Thursday night posted Ciolos on his Facebook page.
According to him, in the absence of realism and honesty in approaching the figures, "we risk to sell illusions only." And "we risk to transfer the growth in the Romanians pockets, yet not the economic growth (that we could blow) but the taxes' and duties' increase in order to pay (this time dearly than in the previous years, because we are doing it with premeditation) the wish of certain politicians to buy political capital with the money of the Romanians, and much worse with the money and work of the future generations," the former Premier wrote.
Ciolos asserted that the uniform pay law must come bundled with a wider "vision."
"This law should come bundled with a vision on how we alleviate the public administration 's running, the organisation of the Health system and Education system, and yet with some explanations and clarifications, too, linked to the current majority's vision regarding the tackling of the minimum wage which I understand it is a reference point in the calculation of the wage scales," posted Dacian Ciolos, adding that "without this minimum approach coherence, we risk to pay dearly the deeply populist experiments."
The uniform pay law for the public sector is necessary to stabilize the currently chaotic payroll system, the more so as one can never know what effects a court ruling could produce, which renders the budget's staff expense part unmanageable, Minister of Public Finance Viorel Stefan said recently.
He explained that this is the reason why the Uniform Pay Bill should be implemented in H2 2017 and that the budget resources are enough to afford the impact of this measure at this stage.
According to the FinMin, public sector staff expenses represent 7.8 pct of GDP, less than 25 pct of collected revenues and the authorities seek to keep them at this level.
"A guiding criterion for me is the following: according to our calculations, the implementation of the law will result in the increase of the wage envelope by 32 billion lei. According to budget projections, the current wage envelope is 63.5 billion lei. An increase of 32 billion lei in the next four years means that we must create the necessary fiscal space to absorb the impact without altering budget balances, meaning this: budget sector staff expenses account for 7.8 pct of GDP and that's where we want them to stay. 7.8 pct of GDP means slightly more than 25 pct of the collected budget revenues," Stefan explained at Antena 3 private broadcaster.
In this context, the Finance senior official assured that he will staunchly see that these indicators are observed.