Romania's public deficit widens four fold in November to 0.73 pct of GDP

Romania’s consolidated public deficit went up four times in November to RON 5.5 billion, compared with a negative result of RON 1.3 billion after the first ten months of this year.

According to the data of the Public Finance Ministry, in November the general consolidated budget deficit reached 0.73 percent of GDP from 0.17 percent of GDP during January-October.

The revenue of the general consolidated budget amounting to RON 205.6 billion, meaning 27.1 percent of the GDP, fell by 1.9 percent in nominal terms compared with the same period of the last year while the expenses amounting to RON 211.1 billion went up in nominal terms by 3.3 percent, but diminished by 0.9 percentage points from GDP. Compared with October, the revenues grew by RON 18 billion and the expenses added RON 22.3 billion.

The revenues from the domestic economy (without the EU funds) amounted to RON 200.1 billion (26.4 percent of the GDP), one percent higher than the same period of 2015.

There were also gains in the collection of the profit tax (10.5 percent), social insurances contributions (7.3 percent ), excises (5 percent) as well as the income and salaries tax (5 percent) compared with the same period of 2015.

The expenses with the public sector employees went up by 9.8 percent compared with the same period of 2015, mainly because of the salaries increases from the second part of 2015 and the increase in the gross minimum salary. The salary increases in the second part of 2015 were 12 percent for the public institutions personnel, 25 percent for the healthcare public system and social assistance system, 10 percent for the exclusive healthcare, educational and social assistance system.

The expenses with goods and services diminished by 0.9 percent compared with the same period of 2015. The social assistance expenses went up by 7.5 percent compared with the same period of 2015, mainly because of the increase by 5 percent of the pension point from January 1 and the state aid doubling for children starting from June 1 2015, as well as other adopted measures from 2016.