At Wednesday’s presidential consultations, the National Liberal Party (PNL) expressed its availability to participate in the government, according to PNL’s interim national leader Ilie Bolojan, who says that Romania is in a „complicated” economic situation, and PNL is also „partially” responsible.

„We are in a complicated economic situation, in which we have a large budget deficit, which is close to last year’s, which we can no longer carry as is for a long time. There is an accelerated increase in debt. At this rate, at the beginning of next year we will exceed an indebtedness of more than 60% of GDP. We have a low absorption of European funds, which creates problems for us in terms of supporting investment that generates development. All these problems are happening against the background of the budgetary management of the past years in which we have generally consumed more than we could afford. That means that, apart from spending much more, we unfortunately also have a decrease in the volume of foreign direct investment in Romania, which slows down the economic growth and measures are needed to correct these negative accumulations,” Bolojan said on Wednesday at the Palace of Parliament.

According to Bolojan, PNL is „partially” responsible for the current situation. „The National Liberal Party is also partly responsible for this situation. Therefore, we expressed both that we are aware of this responsibility, and the willingness to participate in the government in such a way that we can take measures to rectify the situation and then there are the emergency measures and also those that are related to the medium and long-term perspective,” the PNL leader said.

He added that urgent measures are currently being discussed, namely the budget deficit and European funds.

„On the deficit side, it means that no matter what government comes, measures must be taken on the one hand, to ensure the further funding of this deficit, so that Romania remains a reliable country, a safe country for investors, for creditors. That means maintaining our country rating. Also, an urgent measure is to narrow this deficit, and as far as European funds are concerned, speeding up their absorption is a very important component.”

The PNL leader said that the Liberals will be willing to support a package of complex measures that will not disrupt the country’s economy and that targets several components.

„[We need]a cut in the operating expenses of the Romanian state, a cut in inefficiency with all that these aspects mean, the analysis of each institution, where the staff can be downsized- I think it is necessary to downsize the staff, where we can be more efficient we must do it – to get rid of sinecures, of any expenses that cannot be justified, along with decentralisation, de-bureaucratisation, simplification in such a way as to offer equally good services, but with a much lower volume of public expenses.”

According to Bolojan, the second component aims to increase the government’s receipts. „There are today important revenues that are not collected, and we need to increase the share of collection of such revenues. It is possible that in this complex of measures we will also be in a situation where we have to increase rates and taxes. An important component is that of investment. We need to prioritise it, to analyse its multiplying factors and where these aspects are not respected, we perhaps need to stagger or reanalyse them in such a way that we manage, on the one hand, to have expenses as low as possible in the shortest possible time, but without unbalancing the public system, maintaining a stable economic situation and therefore not disrupting our economy while continuing to create conditions for development by maintaining a good level of investment.”

He said that in terms of accessing European funds, renegotiating the National Recovery and Resilience Programme (PNRR) is needed, because there are provisions therein that Romania can no longer respect.

„It is necessary to speed up compliance with the milestones of these measures that must be taken in order to be able to release our funds and access our European money, and it is necessary to replace some projects, because some of the projects that are in the PNRR – for example the healthcare sector, the construction of hospitals cannot be completed until next year – and it would be necessary for these projects to switch to public funding and they should be replaced by projects that can be completed in such a way that, on the one hand, we can close them all, but we can also draw European money to ensure the further development of our country,” said Bolojan.

President Nicusor Dan held informal consultations with parliamentary political parties and formations on Wednesday on the economic and political situation of the country.

AGERPRES