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Senate President and Liberal leader Florin Citu said on Tuesday that the government must come up with credible measures and reduce the deficit in order to borrow at lower interest rates.
"Today we are borrowing at very high interest rates. The solution is what we did last year, a COVID year - reduce the budget deficit. Last year the budget gap narrowed from 10 to 6 percent. This year the effort is too small, I'd say, and this is visible in interest rates. When you are not credible, you pay more. If you want to pay less, you have to implement credible measures. And such an important measure is to reduce the deficit. If the government wants to raise cheaper money, it has to come with a clear message that the year-end deficit will be lower than estimated now. If it comes with a program and shows that the deficit will be less than 5.84 percent, you will see interest rates going down. That's what we did last year. We pushed the deficit below the estimated level," Florin Citu told a press conference in Buzau.
"I borrowed at a negative interest rate and that was a historic period for Romania, we even borrowed before England, which means that we were giving back less money than we borrowed. And our borrowing rates were at a ten-year low, we even borrowed for as low as 2 percent," Citu said.
