UDMR's Kelemen says budget deficit cannot be lowered below 8pct

The budget deficit cannot be lowered below 8% this year, as the necessary period for its reduction is five to six years, the president of the UDMR (Democratic Union of Hungarians of Romania), Kelemen Hunor, stated on Monday evening.

"Reforms are coming, including spending cuts, not by 45 billion euros, because we are not talking about such amounts, but for the Romanian economy, for the Romanian budget, they are still considerable amounts. Slowly, slowly, we have to reduce the deficit, thank God, not in a single year, not in two years. We have five to six years at our disposal, but this year we cannot do more than 8% (...) What we can do is 8.3%, 8.4%, and I believe that everybody will be content if we can end the year with 8.2, 8.3, 8.4. So this is how I see things, but I don't really know what will happen, I will be honest this time. (...) What we can do is a single percentage in five months, because we are not speaking about the whole year right now, given that, in the first period of five to six months, we didn't even get started. We were in an electoral campaign and nobody wanted to deal with these changes, with these, let's say, adjustments in the budget," the UDMR leader told Antena 3 private television broadcaster, Agerpres.

Asked if the European Commission will accept such a deficit, in the context in which our country committed to reduce the deficit to 7%, he replied: "I cannot come up with more precise information, because I am not the one who is leading the discussions, the Ministry of Finance is. The Ministry of Finance has discussions with the Commission every day. And I believe that, when the Commission sees that we have committed ourselves very seriously to make these adjustments, with a certain speed, with predictability, then this 8% deficit can be negotiated with them."

The UDMR leader mentioned that economic growth must be ensured, emphasising that this year economic growth will be very low, in fact "a stagnation".

"We must also ensure an economic growth of 2%, 2.5% in 2026 and slowly, slowly recover. Because this year, I don't think economic growth will be higher than 0.2 - 0.3%, which is not growth, but stagnation. But in terms of numbers, there will be a slight increase, while the regional context and the international context are also not very favourable for Romania right now. But we have our own internal problems, until we reach the regional or international context. So, from this point of view, what the government did with the first package, and even more with the second package, is trying to reduce the deficit, trying to reduce spending, while we cannot really talk about reforms right now," said the UDMR president.