Minister Teodorovici blames companies for fifth postponement of electronic cash registers

The deadline for companies to acquire and implement electronic cash registers was postponed by three months by the Ministry of Finance, the new deadline being September 1 for small businesses and November 1 for large businesses. The reason behind this decision is that the companies are not ready for the change, Finance Minister Eugen Teodorovici told Business Review. These measures were initially supposed to be implemented starting January 2018.

“There are not enough electronic cash registers authorized today, that is why we had to postpone the deadline”, says Eugen Teodorovici, Minister of Finance. “But there will be no more delays after these three months.”

The minister also talked about the pension system after the latest news regarding Pillar II. “The transfer of contributions (social contributions that have passed since 2018 form employer to employee) have led, this year, to a reduced pension budget deficit from RON 7-8 billion, from the amount that reached RON 18 billion in the past. Any scenario for the pension system made by people who do not know what is normal, fair and how the government works generates negative effects on the borrowing costs the Finance Ministry has to pay in the market,” says Teodorovici.

The minister also explained that they have to analyze all the costs involved in the system. “Money in Pillar I and II has the same source, some is publicly managed by the state, and another part is privately owned, if I’m not mistaken. To analyze this we have to answer questions in ways that nobody can challenge, like was this the best way to manage Pillar II? Or were those the highest yields that we can get? The cost that the state has for the seven fund managers is over RON 1.5 billion, a cost that the state is paying as interest for government bonds purchased by the pension funds”, says Teodorovici.

These topics will be analyzed within a government-led team headed by the Labor Ministry, and all possible variants will be publicly presented.

The Legislative program for May-December 2018, published on the website of the Ministry for Relations with Parliament on April 28, announced the existence of a draft law that contributions to Pillar II would be suspended between July 1 and December 31 of 2018, but it was rejected by government officials.