Development minister hopes outstanding amounts to be covered at first budget revision
Minister of Development, Public Works and Administration Adrian Vestea told a press conference held in Bistrita on Monday that he hopes that the first budget revision succeeds in covering a large part of the outstanding amounts on the programmes managed by his ministry, told Agerpres.
Vestea said that he had to take money from the National Local Development Programme (PNDL), the "Anghel Saligny" national investment programme, and from the programme for the consolidation of buildings at seismic risk, in order to cover the arrears of the National Investment Company, whose budget was exhausted in the middle of the year.
"In terms of the programmes we are running as the Ministry of Development, on the NRRP I think we are almost up to date, maybe we have a few weeks. The settlements, very true, are not very large amounts that we currently have in settlement - we are talking about feasibility studies and documentation, that is, very small amounts. On the national local development programmes, PNDL 1 and PNDL 2, we are at the August level, so we are a month late. We hope that in the next few days, if we have the necessary amount allocated, we are able to be up to date on both 'Anghel Saligny' and the two local development programmes. Also, on the National Investment Company, when I became minister, and we are talking about June 15, the entire budget was exhausted, we made revisions within the own budget that we had, we took money from other axes of financing, from the PNDL, from the 'Anghel Saligny' programme, from the seismic risk programmes that were not being implemented to a very high degree, and I hope that the first time we will have an adjustment we will be able to cover a large part of the outstanding amounts," explained the Minister of Development.
Adrian Vestea says that he asked for 1.5 billion lei in the first stage of the revision, but estimates that the amount to be paid by the end of the year will be four times higher.
"We have asked for a first stage, centralising all the projects we have, one and a half billion lei for existing bills. We hope that, seeing the rate at which we are going to receive invoices in the next period, we will reach somewhere around 6 billion by the end of this year," said Minister Vestea.
On Monday, the Minister of Development visited the municipality of Bistrita, together with Mayor Ioan Turc, to visit some of the construction sites financed under his ministry's programmes.