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President Klaus Iohannis stated on Monday that a mix of measures is needed to reduce the budget deficit and added that he discussed the budget with Prime Minister Ludovic Orban, as well as with Finance Minister Florin Citu.
"We had a discussion for the preparation of the budget. Mr. Prime Minister and Mr. Finance Minister wanted to inform me about the progress of work in this extremely important area. The drawing up and the approval of next year's budget represents the most important political action of the Government this year, from this month of December," the head of state said before the meeting of the General Assembly of the Romanian Association of Municipalities.
In relation to the fact that the Finance Minister informed him that he will have the indemnity 'frozen', President Iohannis said: "It seems to me the right thing to do."
Asked if he supports measures such as the cumulation of pensions and salaries or redundancies, Iohannis reiterated that "a mix of measures is needed to allow, however, to reduce the deficit to a reasonable range, around 3 percent."
"It is clear that those failed PSD [The Social Democratic Party] governments have exaggerated with measures that have been hastily taken, without a serious analysis and now the Liberal government must come with a very responsible attitude. Obviously, everyone wants to raise wages, raise pensions, but at the same time we must also consider the budget limitation. We cannot start from the premise that the budget is as big as we want. And then I encouraged them [the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance - ed.n.] to come up with a mix of measures, on the one hand, to encourage economic growth, which allows higher spending, but at the same time, for 2020, which should be the year of budget rebalancing, there must be found ways to reduce spending where it can be reduced, without touching the pocket of the Romanian who still does not afford as much as he wants," the president argued.
