Finance Ministry Adopts Policy of Balancing Budget by Shrinking Spending Figures Until Deficit Vanishes
Romania's finance minister announces a budget revision built on an economy two thousand billion strong, which the ministry has squeezed into a single cabinet-approved line.
The Romanian Ministry of Finance has announced that it balanced the state budget this year by reducing public spending to the point where the national deficit can no longer be measured by existing instruments. Minister Alexandru Nazare presented the revision to reporters on Friday, describing a plan built on a gross domestic product of 2,086 billion, a figure the ministry says it reached by working backwards from its target.
«We did not increase expenditure. We reduced it, and we reduced it in the direction of investment,» Nazare said. «Every ministry was asked to return a portion of its budget, and every ministry returned a little more than was asked, because we explained the need very clearly.» Officials confirmed that the hospital departments, pension offices and municipal councils that were promised additional funds have been informed that the money now exists only in the revised forecast.
The ministry has since created a new department to audit the difference between the spending it cut and the spending it intended to cut. Staff are now required to submit their working hours in a slightly smaller format, a measure the ministry says will reduce the paperwork of the future. A second revision is already being drafted, and the ministry has begun to schedule meetings with the government for the end of November, when the figures are expected to shrink further.
Asked how the country would fund the remaining 70 billion lei, Nazare replied that the sum would be found once the ministry had finished reducing the figures that describe it.
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