The government approved, on Monday, the budget rectification for the state budget, the social insurance budget and the unemployment insurance budget. For the current year, the revenues of the general consolidated budget will be 620.2 billion lei, and the expenses, 743 billion lei.
The approval of the budget correction was announced by the Minister of Finance, Marcel Boloş, at the end of the government meeting.
A revised economic growth of 2.8%, a GDP deflator of 7.2% and an updated GDP of 1768.8 billion lei are the indicators on which the rectification was carried out, which was done, according to the minister, taking into account the macroeconomic forecasts made by the National Forecasting Commission.
The budget correction took into account an improvement in revenue collection, with an increase of 10.4 billion lei, but also the influences generated by the tax amnesty approved by Ordinance 107/2024, which added another 7.9 billion lei to budget revenues.
“We are allocating additional resources for all major state investment projects”
Before the Executive meeting, Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu announced “a positive budgetary rectification, because we are allocating additional resources for all the state’s major investment projects. There is a surplus of budget revenues after the first eight months, revenues that we use to develop Romania.
“84% of the deficit goes to the investment area. We are the first European state in terms of the ratio between the deficit and the volume of investments. Obviously, at this record level of investments, the budget deficit also increases to 6.9% of the Gross Domestic Product”said Marcel Ciolacu.
According to the prime minister, it would be a sustainable deficit, taking into account that 8.5 lei out of 10 spent go to highways, hospitals, schools and gas networks, water and other objectives of local interest
“Practically, what we are doing with this rectification is to apply the model of strong European states. Germany, Italy, France or Spain did so, developed like this and are currently the economic engines of Europe! We are doing the same now, because Romania has reached the political maturity to take such decisions. I am not at all afraid of this new scope that we are taking, especially taking into account development, because, I repeat, we are sustainable – we do not allocate the money only for consumption, but we still come with a serious investment plan”, Marcel Ciolacu also said.
“I don’t have time for philosophers who, as prime ministers, had a deficit of 9.2%, and investments were only 1.7% of GDP”
The Prime Minister spoke of new investments in the entire line of infrastructure development and continued with some political attacks:
“This money goes back into the economy and multiplies. For every 1 euro invested, 6 or 8 euros are returned to the state. For example, Mr. Minister Sorin Grindeanu receives the money and makes payments to companies, the companies finish highways that Romanians have been waiting for for 30 years. And these companies pay thousands of employees and give orders to other hundreds and thousands of suppliers with tens of thousands of employees. This means that, in a few months, from fees, taxes and all this circulation, the money returns to the state budget with a surplus. Moreover, new investments are coming in the whole line of infrastructure development. That is why, from my point of view, we must go forward with great courage. And, personally, I have no time for philosophers who, as prime ministers, had a 9.2% deficit, and investments were only 1.7% of GDP, and the Ministry of Finance’s buffer was 1 billion euros . In fact, they only consumed, and did not build anything.”
The next step is now to quickly adopt the National Reindustrialization Plan, already approved in the PSD-PNL coalition, Marcel Ciolacu also said.
“I was in Oradea and Cluj the other day, there is a huge interest from the private sector on this topic. That’s why we have to make the final adjustments and pass this major project for the development of the economy through the Government”the prime minister added.
