Florin Citu puts PSD's accusations on waste of public money down to 'euphoria of entering government'

Chairman of the National Liberal Party (PNL) Florin Citu said on Thursday evening that the "innuendos" of the Minister of Finance, Adrian Caciu, and of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) leadership regarding the waste of public money during the former's as Prime Minister are "disturbing", but he puts them on account of the "euphoria of entering government", agerpres reports.

"I also saw the statements, later reinforced by the leader of the Social Democratic Party, I also heard discussions about an audit (...) They can conduct any audit, that's not the problem. What is annoying, from my point of view, is the innuendos from the leader of the Social Democratic Party when he talks about these things, because we are in a coalition, in a governing coalition. I put these statements (...) down to the euphoria of entering government. I do not believe they were expecting to enter the government in this period until 2024 (...) But I am telling you that I believe that these are only occurring now, at the beginning and they will not continue," said Florin Citu told private broadcaster Digi 24.

He also mentioned that the figures contradict those who say they have found big problems in the 2021 budget on the payment of salaries.

"It's not true, look at the budget rectification. It has the same budget deficit that I estimated at the summer rectification, it has no other budget deficit. If there were problems, these expenses would have appeared somewhere. At the Ministry of Labor, to give you an example, there are monthly pension payments of 7.4 billion lei. Do you know the amount that went to the Ministry of Labor now for rectification? Maximum 500 million lei, so the money was there (...) Look at what the rating agencies have said in recent years about Romania. It is the country that has had a positive evaluation. This year's budget execution has made these rating agencies, in the midst of a global economic crisis, to change Romania's outlook from negative to stable. If you look at the budget execution, you can see that the revenues this year are higher than last year by almost 52 billion lei, compared to the beginning of the year, we estimate revenues higher by 25 billion lei in this period," Citu explained.

According to him, Romania's economy is functioning and is stable in a difficult period for many European countries.

"The deficit that I left at 10 months is 4 percent, at 11 months less than 5 percent (...) Compared to 2019, when there were the taxes that we eliminated - an additional excised duty on fuel, higher taxation of part-time contracts, the whole Ordinance 114 -, the budget revenues are higher, again, by almost 60 billion lei, which shows that the Romanian economy is working and we managed to stabilize the economy in a difficult period for many countries in the European Union. (...) I told you that these statements are due to the euphoria of entering the government when they were not expecting it," the PNL leader also said.