FinMin: Romania has good institutional relations with all international financial institutions

Romania has very good institutional relations with all international financial institutions, including the European Commission, the Monetary Fund and the World Bank, but this does not mean that it is preparing a stand-by agreement as it had in 2010, Finance Minister Adrian Caciu said on Wednesday.

"I want to give a reply, not necessarily to a person, but to a bearer of such messages that create, how shall I say, emotion in the public space. Romania has very good institutional relations with all international financial institutions, including the European Commission, the Monetary Fund and the World Bank. All these three international institutions should know that they provide technical assistance on certain types of public policies in Romania. It does not mean that Romania is preparing a stand-by agreement as it had in 2010, because Romania is not in the situation it was in 2010 and the situation Romania got into in the end was not only due to domestic policy, but mainly due to international policy or, if you like, to the international situation, when we had a financial crisis of global proportions," said Caciu.

Asked by journalists about the "hole in the budget," he said that there was a "slowdown" in tax collection of 4.7 billion lei and that it should be recovered through measures by the institutions in charge with collection. In addition to these, measures can be taken to "make the most of public money."

He added that the measures did not have a deadline to be taken and that analyses would be made, then there would be a discussion in the governing coalition and the draft law would be put in decision-making transparency, Agerpres informs.

Regarding progressive taxation, the head of Finance said that there will be a debate on this matter.

"We will have this debate. We should not hide saying that we will not have this debate. This is not the time to discuss that progressive taxation will be introduced tomorrow, if it is agreed by the coalition. But we must not hide from the fact that all international financial institutions recommend Romania to switch to progressive taxation in an average period of time, and I repeat: average period of time," said Adrian Caciu.

According to him, it is 3 to 5 years.

Finance Minister Adrian Caciu participated on Wednesday in the conference "Romania in the OECD: towards the Club of Good International Economic Practices."