BNS: 2025 will be a painful year: beside the significant cuts of expenses we will have higher taxes 

2025 will be a very painful year from the fiscal point of view, beside the significant cuts there will be higher taxes, said on Monday the chairman of the Trade Union National Bloc (BNS), Dumitru Costin, in a video recording on the Facebook page of the organisation.   ' The increase of expenses due to the deficit will trigger significant increases of the expenses with interest in the years to come, in the context where we pay monthly interests of over 600 million euro, the equivalent of the price Romania got when they sold Petrom. The correction shows in fact two things: the 2024 budget was badly and non-realistically made, the budget deficit being almost double against the similar period of 2023, namely 71 billion lei in 2024, against 38 billion lei in the first seven months of 2023; without this correction,  many institutions would have been left without many for the salaries. The way this correction was made shows that,  from a fiscal point of view, 2025 will be a painful year where, besides significant cuts in expenses, we will have higher taxes. The balance will come surely. The question is who will pay for these measures and how tough', Dumitru Costin said.   According to him, the budget correction comes from two premises, which justifies the need for intervention in a different way.   ' One premise refers to the adjustment of the real economic growth indicator forecast for 2024, to be reduced from 3.4 to 2.8. From our point of view, the adjustment of this indicator should have generated much more prudence. The second premise refers to expenses which are no longer covered by allocated resources until the end of this year. Beyond the additions of income and expenses for projects with European financing, there is a insignificant adjustment of these, the only argument brought being that of a better collection.If this argument had been a real one, then the government would not have needed the approval of tax amnesty measures recently' explained the president of BNS.   He said that, as regards the adjustment of the expenses chapter, this is produced at the so-called hard components: personnel expenses, social assistance expenses and interests expenses.   ' The main categories of increased expenses are: 8.8 billion more for personnel expenses; 3 billion lei more for interests, 3 billion lei more for transfers, 5 billion lei more for social assistance and 11.3 billion lei more for the increase in the expenses for the single fund for health insurances. Out of the 40 billion lei supplimentary expenses, only 23.6 billion lei are covered by the revenues, the rest of 16.4 billion lei are based on the increase of the public budget deficit', Dumitru Costin said.   The government approved on Monda the budget correction for the state budget, the budget of social insurances and the budget for unemployment insurance, taking into consideratio the macroeconomic estimates made by the National Forecasting Commission, announced the minister of finances, Marcel Bolos, at the end of the government meeting.   The indicators at the basis of the correction are revised economic growth at 2.8%, a GDP deflator of 7.2% and an updated GDP of 1.768.8 billion lei.   The revenues of the general consolidated budget in 2024 reach 620,2 billion lei and the expenses of the general consolidated budget amount to 743 billion lei.