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The budgetary execution at six months could be presented on Tuesday, but the figure of the deficit is smaller than that foreseen in the program, said, on Monday evening, the Finance Minister, Florin Citu, at private TV broadcaster Realitatea Plus.
"Already in the first part of the year, in these first six months, we may have 300 million euro discounted already from this execution and we will present the execution in the coming days, I think tomorrow. And I can tell you that the budget deficit in the first half of the year represents money that remained with companies and COVID expenses (...) The idea is that the money will return to the budget in the coming months. (...) We will present tomorrow deficit figure. It's smaller than the figure we had in our program on deficit for several reasons. Half the deficit comes from the fact that we made those decisions to postpone taxes, contributions, VAT, sequestering, we lifted liens, etc." Citu explained.
A month ago, the Finance Minister said that Romania will record this year a budget deficit of 6.7 pct of the GDP, and that economic contraction will sit at year's end at 2.2 pct of the GDP.
"We have succeeded, through the measures we've taken, to have the first quarter of economic growth, so 2.4 pct of the GDP, which was, after Ireland, the highest economic increase in the European Union. The GDP at six months, we have the second quarter which is negatively affected, and here we will have a contraction of the economy in a scenario that would go towards year's end to minus 2.2 pct of the GDP for the entire year. Romania will not have a technical recession, so we will not have two negative quarters in any case. We will have the recovery of the economy in Q3, as we've said from the beginning," said Citu.
