Romanian PM: The period ahead will certainly not be very good

The prime-minister Ilie Bolojan explained that the period to come will not be a good one, but that the difficult part will end at the end of next year, when the economy recovers. Bolojan says that there was a slowing down of the European economy against the estimates of the budget when it was built for this year and these corrections which take place during this period are necessary so that Romania do not enter default.   "This is not about calculating how much poorer Romanians will be. These packages have some effects that we cannot deny. One effect of the VAT increase will be an increase in prices, which indirectly will slightly fuel inflation, so it is very likely, compared to the estimates, let's say, at the beginning of the year, we will have slightly higher inflation in the second half of this year. We have an economic reality that we cannot deny, which is a European reality, we have had a slowdown in the European economy and compared to the estimates of 2.5% that were used to build the budget at the beginning of the year, economic growth is much lower in the first half of the year," said Ilie Bolojan, Sunday evening, on Antena 3.   Ilie Bolojan said that the period to come will not be a good one, and the people should know what the reality is. ‘We have to discuss this and tell people exactly what the situation is. It is a period when these corrections are absolutely necessary, otherwise, if we don’t take them, the risk that Romania enters some form of payment default is high enough and the estimate we had since the moment we tackled these issues is that over one year, a year and a half at most, at the end of next year the results of these measures will be visible, namely, an economic stability and capacity for growth in the next years. This is the reality and there is no use telling the Romanians something different’, said Bolojan.   The premier said that the measures in the second package will reduce expenses. "And these proposals that are part of Package 2 meet those realities, so that, on the one hand, we can reduce expenditure, increase our revenues where necessary, because an important component is on the tax side, there's a third component of this package, changes to the legislation that relates to insolvency, changes in tax legislation, so that there is less capacity to evade paying taxes, to collect value added tax and other taxes in a better way, to discourage undeclared work and this third package of measures comes to meet this need," explained Bolojan.   .  ‘At the same time, this package comes to correct some injustice, some negative accumulations which have happened over these years, such as the aspects connected to the retirement of magistrates, we have a reality in Romania which we cannot deny, that we are the last but one place in Europe from the point of view of active population. The population involved in the economy, those who are able to work, over 55, practically half of the Romanians are not involved in a form of contract work, because we have too fast retirements, we sometimes have pensions that don’t reflect the amount of work you have done over a short career and if we don’t have more people in the labour market, there is no way we can think that we will be better off in the years to come’ Ilie Bolojan added.   Coalition leaders have not yet agreed on the second package of measures to reduce the budget deficit.  (Photo:https://gov.ro/)