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Romania is among the countries in the European Union with the lowest economic contraction, but also with the lowest increase in government deficit, while public investments are the highest in the last ten years, Prime Minister Ludovic Orban told a news conference in Brasov on Thursday.
"Romania, in the second quarter, is among the countries with the lowest economic contraction, of 10.5%, compared, for example, with the average of those in the euro area, where the contraction was 15%. Regarding the first half, the contraction is 3.9%, which places Romania among the countries with the lowest contraction. All the measures adopted by our government were in support of economic development, in support of companies, their employees. We increased investments in the first half, we have the largest public investment in the last ten years and that happened during a period of economic contraction. Not only have we not closed construction sites, we have opened new ones," Orban said.
According to him, there are signs of economic recovery, noting that the government is implementing its recovery and investment plan unveiled on July 1, for which 95% of the legislation necessary for implementation has been adopted.
"Of course, there has been an increase in the government deficit. It is the smallest increase in the government deficit among European countries. (...) The goal is to keep this deficit as low as possible. Look at what deficits are programmed in the other European countries and you will see that ours, of 8.6%, is a reasonable one in relation to those of other EU countries; later on, by supporting economic recovery and the resumption of the economic growth at a fast pace we will gap the deficits in 2-3 years, to the level regulated by the EU Treaty, of maximum 3%," said Orban.
According to him, there are signs of the EU economy recovering, and Romania's recovery depends on that as 80% of Romania's trade is with other EU countries.
At the same time, the prime minister specified that the number of employees on an employment contract was higher on August 15 than it was on January 1, before the outbreak of the economic crisis caused by the pandemic.
"Another indicator, released by the National Statistics Institute (INS) that which shows that things are not very bad in the economy, shows that the average June net pay, which is an objective indicator, was 5% higher than in June 2019," Orban also pointed out.
AGERPRES .
