Vasile Tofan
“The budgetary challenge is indeed serious. I want to acknowledge that. At the same time, I want to assure you that we have the funds for these one-time payments to the entire public sector in October,” the prime minister said at a press conference.
Responding to a question about how the government intends to proceed in the event of a further increase in the deficit and a shortage of resources for next year, Tofan stated that the long-term solution is to restore economic growth and improve the efficiency of government spending.
“The key solution we must focus on is restarting the economy. At the same time, we need to combat the waste that exists in the public sector. One of this government’s top priorities and first steps was to address the issue of unreasonably high salaries, and we have done so. Now, as part of other measures, we are analyzing the efficiency of state-owned enterprises—we have a lot of work ahead of us here. We are also examining the efficient use of public funds, and there is a great deal to be done in this area as well. But let me emphasize once again: the main source of growth in budget revenues is economic growth,” the prime minister noted.
According to him, if the economy grows and GDP increases along with it, the state will receive significantly more tax revenue. At the same time, Tofan noted that optimizing government spending alone is not enough to ensure sustainable financing of budget initiatives.
The goal is to keep the deficit below 5% of GDP
The Prime Minister also confirmed that the government intends to keep the budget deficit below 5% of GDP.
“That is our goal. To a certain extent, we are also helped by the fact that the implementation of some capital investment projects is being delayed, which means they will be carried over to the next budget cycle. This is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it allows us to save funds this year. But I don’t think we should be happy that such important investments in infrastructure or, for example, the construction of hospitals are being postponed. However, from the perspective of the current year, this will help us balance the budget,” the prime minister said.
As a reminder, the government intends to partially compensate for the delay in raising salaries for public sector employees by providing one-time payments in October to all public sector workers whose gross salary is less than 20,000 lei.
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