Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan said on Monday that Bucharest City Hall will receive government funding to help balance its severe budgetary situation only if it also implements the necessary reforms.
He was asked on private broadcaster Antena 3 how serious the budgetary situation of Bucharest City Hall is, given the working meeting he held on Sunday at the Government headquarters with the general mayor, Ciprian Ciucu.
"From a budgetary point of view, Bucharest City Hall is in a serious situation; this is the reality. This means it has very large debts, both from the City Hall to the main operators - the district heating operator and the public transport operator - and from these operators to others. The heating operator owes money to ELCEN and to those who supply it with steam, while the public transport company, STB, owes money to the state budget, to ANAF, where it has rescheduling arrangements which, if not honoured, would lead to much greater losses. This shows, on the one hand, chronic underfunding of Bucharest City Hall, due to decisions made over the past three, four or five years," Bolojan said.
According to the prime minister, the measures that need to be taken at Bucharest City Hall include both reducing expenditure and increasing revenues, Agerpres informs.
"Bucharest City Hall, which once received more than half of the taxes collected in the capital, has gradually lost revenue each year and now receives around 40 per cent. Each percentage point represents roughly 100 million lei, meaning that a 10-percentage-point drop translates into a loss of about one billion lei. The public transport company alone owes more than one billion lei to the tax authorities. As a result, the measures required are of a governmental nature: spending cuts, higher revenues, rescheduling of debts and borrowing. There are no painless solutions.," Ilie Bolojan explained.
In this context, he was asked whether the general mayor would also receive financial support from the Government to help stabilise the situation.
"We will provide funding on the condition that Bucharest City Hall also carries out the necessary reforms. Without this conditionality, imagine that tomorrow another municipality in Romania, smaller, with its own problems, will come and say, we also want resources because we too are in a difficult situation'. Of course, on a different, much smaller scale, but for years, unfortunately, our governments have taken actions towards local administration that have not encouraged performance," Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan added.
Comentează