FinMin Teodorovici:Tentative budget scenarios include freezing public sector wages, earlier enforcement of wage law

Minister of Public Finance Eugen Teodorovici and Liberal Senator Florin Citu traded fire over the next state budget draft, following a document the Ministry of Public Finance sent to the EC listing a set of measures pondered in order to keep the budget deficit within the limit of 3 percent of GDP.

Senator Florin Citu published a fragment of the document on his Facebook account, blaming the government that it plans to default on its promises. In reply, Finance Minister Teodorovici on Saturday told Digi24 TV channel that the document on the tentative freezing of public sector wages, presented by Liberal Senator Florin Citu, is public and was sent to the European Commission as a working document, as a variant to consider.

Teodorovici added that the authorities are also weighing in on enforcing the wage law ahead of term, by 2020 instead of 2022.

"It is a document sent to the European Commission, a working document, so to say, a possible variant sent to the European Commission because this is the way the government has been working for years, and all member states are doing this: send the European Commission debates, scenarios, calculations for a final decision to be made one way or the other. In a few weeks we will table to the government the 2019 budget bill where the final version will be put on paper. This is a discussion, a scenario proposed by the Ministry of Finance, based on calculations, and there is even a proposal to apply the wage law not until 2022, but by 2020, just to clearly show that we are very sure of what we are doing, that we are not applying measures beyond the term of this government, ie 2020. Moreover, I must emphasize once again that the PSD-ALDE government has put into practice everything it promised. It didn't cut the Romanians' incomes," Teodorovici explained.

With regard to the possible freezing of public sector hiring, the Finance Minister said that freezing the number of employees in the central public administration is indeed a working scenario, as a way to resettle, restructure, render efficient the central public administration, because a long-term common sense observation is that a much more efficient administration is needed. "As an example I gave in previous interventions, I said that in the Ministry of Finance, support jobs are somewhere at 18 percent of the ministry's personnel, and in other ministries they are somewhere at 30 percent or more, which needs to change, because the administration should not be oversized or indulge in unjustified public spending. That is, provided that the government has respect for taxpayers, for the Romanians in general," Teodorovici said.

The FinMin also assured the money is definitely in place for the promises related to the higher pension point to be carried out and said that the Pension Bill approved by the government and sent to Parliament provides for a 15 percent increase of the pension point next year, and that the minimum wage could be raised even before January 1, 2019.

"There are no issues with the money in the budget coffers and we, as a responsible party and government, respect our promises. As a principle, that's what we, as a government are required to do, effectively manage public money. 2019 must be for us, for the entire country, a year of investment in the private sector and especially in the public area. Large infrastructure projects and small local projects need to continue and especially increase their speed and volume. Raising the minimum wage means there is money available," the head of Finance said.

According to the document sent to the European Commission and that was also posted by Liberal Senator Florin Citu on his Facebook page, the measures contemplated for drafting the 2019 budget blueprint include freezing wages in the public sector at the level of 2018 (the uniform wage law would no longer be applied) and keeping the value of holiday vouchers the same as in 2018, respectively at 1,450 lei / employee. Another possibility is to keep the average number of employees in the public sector the same as in 2018.