ZF English

Investment sacrificing saves budgetary gap target again

28.07.2010, 23:20 16

The Finance Ministry has tightly managed to fall in line withthe budgetary deficit target negotiated with the IMF for the firsthalf of the year, of 18.2bn RON, but the result was achieved, inline with the already customary practice of sacrificing investmentsand delaying payments to the private environment, including VATreimbursements. Even so, total expenditures rose by 4%, whilereceipts were 0.1% lower. Sums earmarked for investments were 22%smaller than in the first half of 2009, while goods and servicesexpenses were cut by just 1.7%, and personnel ones dropped by 4.5%.Instead, subsidies increased by 6.3%, and social expenses by morethan 12%. While in April and May the decline pace of capitalexpenditures slowed toward 10%, at the end of the first half thedrop reached 22.4% against the same period of last year. Investmentexpenses, including capital expenses and transfers for developmentprogrammes, reached 11.7bn RON, accounting for just 12.2% in totalbudgetary expenditures. "Data referring to budgetary executionreveal deepening imbalances at the level of the general budget, ascapital expenses continued to shrink, while social assistanceexpenses and subsidies maintained their upward trend. In early2010, the government pledged to cut expenses, but after the firstsix months of the year we're still witnessing an increase ofcurrent expenses by 6.4%, so that this intention is just adeclarative one, without materialising in statistical data, whichdo not include the level of arrears, anyway," commented MelaniaHăncilă, chief-economist of Volksbank.

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