Financiarul

The PSD president reiterated that the Social Democrats refuse to vote for an ‘anti-social budget that explicitly proclaims the drop of the pension point from 43.8 percent in 2009 to 39 percent’.
‘We want a budget that accounts for the cumulated elements. We waited for an anti-downturn budget, which should have ‘learnt’ something from the sad experiences of 2009. Unfortunately, this budget repeats the faults of 2009, is deaf to what the economic environment has said repeatedly and insensible to the social call that most Romanians are sending at this moment’, Geoana argued.

He underlined that the draft budget put forward by the government has shortcomings with respect to the social protection of pensioners, as well as to the creation and protection of jobs.
‘The most severe fact for the Romanian Social Democrats is that this budget is deeply anti¬social. It is unacceptable that this budget explicitly proclaims the drop of the pension point from 43.8 percent in 2009, which saw a downturn too, to 39 and something percent, in 2010.

If we vote for this budget, we will all be guilty, both the majority and the opposition, for this dramatic drop of the purchasing power of the most vulnerable Romanians: the pensioners and the people with modest incomes’, Geoana added.
With reference to jobs, the PSD head criticized the low budget percentage allocated for public investments, which could have offered jobs especially in the construction field.

‘What troubles me and what had also made the subject of my presidential campaign, if we stop striving for the creation of jobs, this draft budget includes only utopia. There is no coherent measure of governmental programmes to actually create jobs. Not even public investments, which accounted for nearly 10 percent of the budget last year, at least on paper, this year they reach a maximum 4-5 percent; it is obvious that jobs are the greatest weakness of this budget’, stressed Geoana.
At the same time, the Social Democratic leader drew Premier Emil Boc’s attention to the danger of seeing the unemployment rise.

‘It is a budget that is good for some and bad for others. There are bonuses and perks for privileged categories in the public sector, while teachers, medical personnel, the ones that are public workers in local administrations are actually called to reduce their incomes and to find themselves in danger of losing their jobs’, added Geoana.