Romanian President Supports Govt’s Fiscal Strategy, Says Country Needs More Public Sector Layoffs

"Romania is borrowing money to pay wages in the public sector and pensions. We're borrowing EUR3.5 million this year for pensions and the difference up to EUR4.8 billion to pay public sector wages," said Basescu, adding Romania cannot afford to continue like this.

"I support the Government's fiscal strategy because I realize we have no other solution," the president said.

The head of state also said Romania's public sector is still overstaffed and needs to be trimmed.

"We have 1.2 million public sector employees and their number needs to be reduced! We need to lower state spending if we want to have a viable country that doesn't eat up all the resources its economy produces," said Basescu.

Romania's Government adopted the fiscal-budgetary strategy for 2012-2014 this week. The strategy blocks until 2014 certain pension raises, which would have taken effect next year, keeps a ban on public sector hiring and public purchase of cars, furniture and office equipment.

The Government also plans to change the building, land and vehicle tax system, introducing a new calculation method that will allow earnings from this source to increase by more than 1 billion lei (EUR235 million) over the next three years.

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