Financiarul

The most important issue now is to elaborate the budget and to cut the public spending, according to the members of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (WB) and European Commission (EC) mission, pointed out on Tuesday President of the National Council of Small and Medium-Sized Private Enterprises (CNIPMMR) Ovidiu Nicolescu.

“IMF underlined the fact that the main issue now is the adoption of the Law on budget and the public spending cuts”, said Ovidiu Nicolescu, quoting the IMF mission head to Romania Jeffrey Franks.
In the absence of the Fund’s help, Romania’s budget deficit would have hit ten percent and observance of a deficit level of 7.3 percent was possible due to the cooperation with the international financial institutions, Jeffrey Franks told the employers’ unions participating in the talks, respectively the Association of Business People in Romania UGIR-1903, CONPIROM and CNIPMMR.

The head of IMF mission also said that the third loan installment could arrive beyond December because of the political turmoil. Ovidiu Nicolescu’s proposals refer to the taxation field in respect of public spending, especially of the local administrations and the SMEs relation with the state. Ovidiu Nicolescu also suggested to the IMF representatives that the majority of amounts coming from foreign financiers be used for investments with a multiplying effect in the economy.

“The employers’ unions and trade unions proved more cohesion and responsibility than the politicians”, appreciated Dan Matei Aghaton, vice-president of COMPIROM, who emphasized that Romania can leave the crisis behind by using the leverage of budget spending reduction and boosting investments. All the employers’ unions heads who discussed on Tuesday with IMF said that a delay in the transfer of the third installment would be a disaster and that only a political consensus for the fast approval of a Government could solve the pending issues with foreign financiers.