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Ionut Dumitru: In 2018, the social account is going to reach its pre-crisis level
Romania is going to reach the same pay envelope it had in the public sector before the economic crisis, when all of our adjustment efforts were shattered, the President of the Fiscal Council, Ionut Dumitru, told a press conference organized by the European Commission Representation in Romania.
"If we look at the pay envelope we have in the public sector, we can see that it was adjusted and over the past years it started to grow again. In 2018, estimates show that we are going to reach the same pay envelope we had before the outburst of the financial crisis. All of our adjustment efforts were shattered back then and now the social account has reached its pre-crisis level. And this is also valid for social assistance. If we look at the public investments, we can see that they have reached the minimum level of the past 15 years, probably around 3 per cent of the GDP, although the fiscal-budgetary strategy mentioned that they will grow, when they actually continued to decrease," said Ionut Dumitru.
He also mentioned that public investments were the source for budget adjustments, when such adjustments were needed. According to Dumitru, the fiscal revenue is very small in Romania, of only 25.6 per cent of the GDP in 2017, against an European average of 40 per cent.
"It's no point to discuss European infrastructure, European social services, when we have to deal with such a huge, enormous gap, between the European average and our tax collections. If we look at our neighbour Bulgaria, we can see that the level is 29.1 per cent of the GDP, which is almost 4 points of the GDP above us. If we had Bulgaria's revenues, we will have budgetary surplus," underscored Ionut Dumitru.
The European Commission Representation in Romania on Wednesday organized the conference titled "2018 European Semester: Country Report on Romania.