Romania is experiencing an alarming situation as far as the employment of workforce is concerned, because approximately 10% of the population has to provide for the remaining 90%, Paul Pacuraru, the new Minister of Labour, Family and Equal Opportunities says in his first interview for the printed press since taking office.
"We have 21 million inhabitants, of which the active population accounts for 9.8 million and the inactive population for 8.4 million inhabitants (46%). Out of the active population, the employment rate stands at less than 9 million inhabitants, with the rest of them being unemployed. Out of the 9 million, only 6 million are salaried employees, with the rest being other self-employed workers who do not receive a salary and produce just enough to support themselves. Out of the salaried people, approximately 2.5 million work in constructions and industry and the remaining 3.2 million are employed by the public and services sector," the Labour minister believes.
Therefore, Pacuraru adds, almost half of the salaried employees (43%) and almost 10% of the total population of Romania are directly productive and generating added value (construction and industry), while the rest are public and services sector employees. "Services in their turn drive the economy and the economic development. The estimate is a bit exaggerated here, but expresses a relevant ratio," Pacuraru explains.
The minister adds that with such a contradiction in the system, nobody has been able to solve and improve the economic performance. The solution is to ensure growth of the active population and of the number of salaried employees. "This way the social state of the population will improve and we will have money for budgets and assistance," he explains.
The number of salaried people in the economy has been dwindling over the last 16 years, progressively going down to about 6 million in 2006, according to the investigations of the National Statistics Institute and the Labour Ministry, while the number of retired people has gone up to almost 5 million, so that the salaried employees/retired people ratio is now close to 1 to 1. The minister says that the priority of his term is to support everything that has to do with labour and employment. "To my surprise, there was no state secretary within the ministry to manage the labour and employment issue. There is such a department in the new organisation structure, with a labour and employment state secretary to manage the policy area, because we have the Employment Agency for the executive side of things," states Paul Pacuraru.
As for pensions, Pacuraru says that the pension point will increase by 5% this year. "The budget allows us to do that. The target is to have the real purchase power of the pensions increase by 30% until 2008," he said.
Commenting on the 6% cut of the social security contributions, Pacuraru says that there is a contradiction here. "On the one hand we want to raise pensions, on the other hand we want to set up the private pension funds, where 2% will go, and on the other we want to find another 6% to cut the social security contributions. The pension office is currently running a simulation to see where the security budget deficit goes with every percentage point "dropped"," he added.
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