This year’s budget provides money for the payment of wages and pensions as they were in 2024, but there is no fiscal room for indexations in 2025, Finance Minister Tanczos Barna said on Tuesday.

„The calculations are made on the taxes and fees in force now and in the 2025 budget there is no room for indexation, indexation of wages and pensions. We have made sure that we can pay out the wages and pensions as they were in 2024. It is a very important issue, because any exaggeration could generate imbalances that would endanger these payments as well,” Tanczos said after debates on general actions in the 2025 national budget held by Parliament’s budget and finance committees.

As for the one-off aids, Tanczos said that they are running into RON 2 billion, but at this moment the allocation is not detailed, which falls within the powers of the Ministry of Labour.

„We are waiting for a week, two, a few weeks after the budget is approved and I hope to receive the proposal from the Ministry of Labor.”

Asked if we should expect tax increases, VAT increases after the presidential election, Tanczos replied: „We do not take into account these increases, given the 7% deficit and the control of expenses.”

The minister said that the primary objective for 2025 is to maintain the 7% deficit by reducing and keeping expenses under control and by a prudent forecast of increasing revenues for 2025.

„Romania’s economy is a solid economy; it is constantly growing and the budget is also based on this solid economy. The primary objective for us in 2025 is to maintain the 7% deficit, on the one hand, by reducing and keeping expenses under control. On the other hand, through a prudent forecast of revenue growth for 2025. I think it’s possible. I am convinced that together with our colleagues from the relevant ministries and from ANAF, Customs and the other institutions that bring revenues to the aggregate national budget or to the local budgets, we can achieve our objective.”

In his opinion, the 2025 budget is at the same time one of solidarity, because it is the first time that the territorial administrative units use „the figures closest to reality” in terms of the per capita allocation of money.

„Here we are talking about the results of the census. This creates certain imbalances at the local level and there the government is looking for the solution of balancing and smoother transition, a smoother transition, from the figures in the statistics to those in the census, but we cannot accept that for years, entire decades, amounts have been allocated for fictitious persons who appear by the hundreds, by the thousands at an address for which the respective territorial administrative units received financial allocations from the budget or to the detriment of other such units.”

Tanczos also said that the revenue growth targets in 2025 are based on a prudent forecast and better collection, but also on spending cuts and reshuffles that create „a leaner state, a state that serves citizens and collects taxes to offer more instead of spending more.”

AGERPRES