PM Orban: We must keep economic engine represented by investments at maximum speed

Prime Minister Ludovic Orban on Thursday highlighted at the beginning of the Government meeting how important it is to continue to invest, while he was referring to both public investments and those made by companies under the coordination of the ministries, or those carried out by private companies.

"Gradually, we will cancel the confinement measures taken in the epidemiological context, and we will restart the economic activities in various sectors according to a pace that, and I repeat this, it won't depend on just our will because all that we want is to restart the entire economy. What I'm saying is that we will make the decisions depending on the risk of spreading the virus and on the possibility to reduce the risk of spreading close to zero. What is certain instead is that we need to maintain the economic engine, which is represented by investments, at maximum speed, and I mean here both public investments and those made by companies under the coordination of the ministries, or those carried out by private companies," Orban said at the Government meeting on Thursday.

According to him, the Government has already developed a series of instruments meant to support the economic, such as the SME Invest Programme.

"We will also prepare the product for the large companies, to support the investment process, but we also need to get sure that everything that depends on the public area is done at maximum speed, and very smoothly. And we also have several things that are already clear to us at this point - we need to speed up the procedure, for which reasons we issued the emergency ordinance by which we have simplified the public procurement procedures, we shortened the terms and we have established the responsibilities for the ones involved in the procurement process, especially to increase the speed of investment process. We have very many procedures in procurement and it's important of course that procurements are done with maximum correctitude and in full compliance with the law, but it's also important that the whole process unfolds faster," said the Prime Minister.

He asked the Ministry of Development to increase the speed of the procedures in the public procurements field and to start investments as soon as possible.

The head of the Executive also asked the ministries of economy and environment to speed up investments in their areas.

Moreover, the PM brought to mind the measures taken to stimulate investments at the local public authorities and universities level.

"For the local authorities, we have increased the indebtedness and withdrawal ceiling precisely because of the fact that any loan contracted by the local authorities cannot be used otherwise than for investments. And this is also the reason for which we allowed the universities to used their balances to stimulate investments. In any field of activity, be it energy, transport infrastructure, communications, the environment we need to speed up all procedures so that we can pass to the next phase in the case of all ongoing public investments," said the PM.