Inflation could go down to 2 per cent this year, according to Finance Minister

Minister of Finance Florin Citu estimates inflation will go down below 2 per cent this year, in the context of a downward trend at present.

"PSD (Social Democratic Party) continued to shout - and this is pure wickedness in my opinion - day after day, although people were already going through a difficult time, that things will turn bad, Romania will have tens of thousands of deaths, unemployment will go up to 2-3 million, the economy will be dead in the water. They said all these things tirelessly and every time we proved it wasn't like that. The number of deaths wasn't the one they estimated, the economy is not dead in the water and the prices did not explode. Just remember how they shouted that we need to cap the prices. We kept telling them it was madness what they were asking, because we will end up in poverty, but they never listen. They continued to shout. Actually, we can see now, the inflation is dropping, it's 2.7 per cent and it will go down below almost 2 per cent this year. So we will have decreasing inflation. Interest rates went down, although they said they will explode. They also threatened that nobody will lend us money, but we went to the international market and we had the most successful issue of government bonds from among the countries that issued bonds during this time, because it was not just Romania who did it and in times of crisis," Finance Minister Florin Citu told Realitatea Plus private television broadcaster.

The National Bank of Romania has reduced the inflation forecast for the end of this year down to 2.8 from 3 per cent and for the next year, the central bank forecasts inflation of 2.5 per cent, compared with the previous estimates indicating inflation of 3.2 per cent.

Moreover, the Minister of Finance said the total amount earmarked for investments reaches 13 billion lei in the first five months of the year, the highest in the past 10 years.

"In April we already had 4.1 billion lei for investments - and in May 3.1 billion lei for investments, with the total amount invested in the first five months, 13 billion lei, being the highest amount spent in the first five months of the past decade. This means that even during the global economic crisis generated by the coronavirus this Government was still able to do the best thing, to find the money for investments," said Florin Citu.