Iohannis: Prime Minister assured me budget can cover planned fuel subsidy

President Klaus Iohannis said on Thursday that cutting excise duties on fuel is not possible and that directly capping or subsidizing the fuel price isn't feasible either, mentioning however that Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca assured him that the amount needed to cover the planned support of 0.50 RON per litre of fuel can be borne by the budget.

"Cutting excise duties is only apparently within the governments' reach, in reality it is not, because of the European legislation. Excise duties are easy to modify if you want to raise them, cutting them below a certain level is rather not possible. So this discussion stops right from the start and remains just a mathematical theory, so to speak. The other tools available to the government are certainly the national ones: modifying the VAT rate, altering the budget subsidy or resorting to other mechanisms. With the sharp rise in pump prices, the government has with good reason looked into the matter and concluded that it needs to do something, to the possible extent," said Iohannis who attends the EU-Western Balkans Summit in Brussels.

The head of the state said that directly capping fuel prices or a significant fuel subsidy are no feasible solutions, "but to the extent possible - and I discussed the subject with the Prime Minister yesterday and he explained to me how he sees the mechanism - to the extent possible, it is correct to do it. So this is where we stand now and the Prime Minister has assured me that this amount can be borne by the national budget from resources the Finance Ministry will identify." AGERPRES