Radio România Internațional

Tag: expenses

  • EU – higher defence expenses

    EU – higher defence expenses

    With a war, which seems to be dragging on at its borders and with a White House leader, whom some have described unpredictable, some transactional, and others both, the EU cannot afford the luxury of putting common defence and security at the bottom of its agenda.

    EU leaders have recently convened in Brussels for an informal meeting devoted exactly to this issue. And they have insisted not only on raising the member states’ defence budgets but also on funding some joint projects out of community funds. Funding and cooperation at EU level might offset budgetary constraints, which are presently preventing some of the countries from earmarking more money for defence. Differences in the defence output could thus be eliminated and what is being produced in the EU, namely gear and ammunition, could be used in all member countries.

    Also attending the talks, Romania’s president, Klaus Iohannis, has underlined that the discussions should not miss out on the NATO membership of many EU members. Romania, he insisted, does not accept the idea of a European defence, which is being separate or done in parallel with what we are presently doing in NATO, because such a defence might not work out well. Community cooperation must not overlap the role of NATO, seen as the main player in the trans-Atlantic security, most of the EU leaders also believe.

    Invited to the talks, NATO Secretary General, Mark Rutte, says that irrespective of the solutions found, Europe’s defence industry must grow and the main solution here is to raise the defence budgets.

    “We are now assessing the gaps for each of the allies between where we are and where we should be. And based on that, the capability targets will be decided upon. And based on that, we will decide on the new defence spending plans. But it will be considerably higher than 2 percent of the GDP, I can assure you” the Alliance leader said.

    In terms of procurement, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, was the only one to speak about “preferential purchase” from the European Union. This position, which would exclude a large part of US suppliers in the future, has triggered reluctance among member countries who want to avoid tense relations with United States against the present global insecurity background, as our correspondent in Brussels has noticed.

    The USA is a NATO ally, which has so far covered most of the Alliance’s procurement burden. And NATO Secretary General suggests the EU countries gradually take over more and more of this burden, not only in terms of covering NATO expenses, but also in terms of the support granted to Ukraine.

    President Klaus Iohannis reminded the Romanian journalists that in spite of the big deficit last year, Romania registered significant economic growths, which also allowed for bringing the defence budget up to 2.5% of the GDP, an example for the EU countries.

    (bill)

  • Incomes and expenses in Romanian households

    Incomes and expenses in Romanian households

    Household spending in Romania increased in the third quarter of last year.

     

    In the third quarter of last year, a household in Romania had an average total monthly income of 8,255 lei, equivalent to about 1,650 euros, up 0.5% per household compared to the second quarter of the same year. According to the National Institute of Statistics, calculated for a single person, average monthly incomes were almost 3,300 lei, by 0.7% higher. Compared, this time, with the third quarter of the previous year, the average total monthly incomes of a household and those of a single person increased by just over 13%. Of the 8,255 lei earned in a family, last year, in the third quarter, most were spent. Higher by 9% compared to the previous year, the average monthly total expenses represented, in total, 85% of income.

     

    In 2024, an increase in the purchasing power of the population was recorded, according to financial analyst Adrian Codirlaşu, who explains why inflation is perceived as higher than the statistics indicate: ʺWe see an increase in expenses higher than inflation. It is true, there is also a volume component, because, as income increased, a larger quantity was purchased ; ideally it would be possible to separate the volume part from the price increase part. But it is possible that certain things that are part of the expenses are not included in inflation and that is why inflation is actually felt much stronger than it is in reality. In principle, the shares remained relatively similar to the previous period.ʺ

     

    The most important source of Romanians’ income was salaries and other salary rights, followed by those from social benefits, pensions,  unemployment or social assistance. In an urban household, the average total monthly income was 1.3 times higher than in rural areas, and, calculated for a single person, 1.5 times higher.

     

    Most expenses in the third quarter were incurred by the consumption of agri-food products, non-alcoholic beverages and non-food products, for the payment of utility bills, taxes, contributions, dues or fees, but also for the purchase of clothing and footwear. The lowest level of average monthly expenses of households in Romania was the one made for education. ʺ85% of incomes go to taxes and expenses,ʺ  the Bucharest press reports, concluding, ironically, that ʺRomanians have higher incomes, but spend almost everything.ʺ

     

     

  • December 30, 2024

    December 30, 2024

    GOVERNMENT In their last session this year, the government in Bucharest is working on an emergency ordinance aimed at curbing public expenses in 2025. The project, agreed upon by the leaders of the ruling PSD-PNL-UDMR coalition contains measures such as ceasing employment in state-owned institutions, freezing pensions and salaries of state-employees as well as the cancellation of bonuses and other rewards. According to the ruling coalition, these measures are aimed at cutting budget expenses by 19 billion lei, the equivalent of 4 billion Euros, which accounts for one percent of the GDP. Trade unions, however, have lashed out at the new austerity measures, and threatened with protests. A law on the state budget for the next year is to be adopted by the government in January and sent for Parliament approval in a special sitting.

     

    PRICE HIKES The Romanians will be paying more for petrol and diesel as of January 1, due to the 6% rise in the fuel excises, says a document recently released by the Finance Ministry. A liter of petrol will be 3 eurocents higher and diesel will have almost the same price. Excises for alcohol beverages will also grow by 4.4% as of January 1. Local taxes and duties will also be adjusted to the inflation rate, but the decision in this respect is going to be made by city halls. The General Council in Bucharest has decided to raise these taxes by 10.4%.

     

    ATLAS Romania’s Foreign Ministry on Sunday night said that on December 18, by means of the Romanian ambassador to NATO, it had conveyed its disapproval over the distribution of a geographic atlas comprising maps from the time of the so-called, ‘greater Hungary’. “The atlas has a provoking nature in the context of the strategic partnership between Romania and Hungary and their NATO allies. The Foreign Ministry in Bucharest has thus reiterated the position it has consistently conveyed to the Hungarian authorities, that any declaration and provoking gesture is not going to contribute to the consolidation of the partnership relations between Romania and Hungary. The common history has to remain an object of study for historians” – the diplomacy in Bucharest says. Dismantled at the end of the First World War, the so-called ‘greater Hungary’ included territories occupied by Budapest, which today belong to Romania, Slovakia, Croatia and Slovenia.

     

    SURVEY The war in Ukraine, the political crisis and the latest price hikes have been the main concerns of the Romanians in 2024, says an IRES survey. According to data released, one out of four Romanians is dissatisfied with the way they are living at present and a similar percentage was unable to mention a single reason for being happy in 2024. According to the same sources, politicians remain on the last position in a ranking of the most trusted professional categories. Furthermore, more than half of the Romanians believe that the year 2024 was worse than 2023 in terms of politics, the way the country was ruled and also from the economic point of view. More than four out of 10 interviewees believe the event that most negatively impacted Romania in 2024 was the cancellation of the first round of the presidential election under a Constitutional Court ruling. Over 60% believe the move was a bad decision. The survey was conducted by phone over December 17 and 20 on 964 respondents with an error margin of +/- 3.3%.

    (bill)

  • New measures aimed at cutting public expenses

    New measures aimed at cutting public expenses


    The PSD-PNL coalition government in Bucharest has announced it will continue to promote discipline in spending public money, with a declared purpose of curbing the budget deficit. In this respect, the Executive has come up with a fresh emergency ordinance aimed at diminishing expenses at the end of the year.


    The Finance Ministry put the project up for public debates on Tuesday. Under the new provisions, public institutions and city halls are facing a new series of restrictions related to the organization of festivals and competitions. Credit accountants are no longer allowed to sign legal contracts for the purchase of office furniture, or other goods as well as maintenance and repair services.


    Also, under the new law, the implementation of the pay rises legally obtained by state employees has been postponed for the year 2024. Romanias Social-Democratic Prime Minister, Marcel Ciolacu says that no one has to worry about the new law though as there are enough budget funds for salaries and the other expenses the government pledged to cover. Pensions will be indexed as of January 1st according to the inflation rate of 13.5%.


    “We have enough money for pensions, wages, to ensure the state functioning and other investment” – the head of the government has said. Mass-media points to the fact that the new government measures are coming shortly after the European Statistical Office, Eurostat, has revealed that Romania, with 6.3%, and Hungary with 6.6% are the countries with the highest government deficit out of all the 27 EU members.


    According to the same sources, Romania has registered a 5.9% GDP deficit in the first three months of 2023 and of 6.3% in the fourth quarter of 2022.


    In the meantime, the opposition USR and the Liberal splinter, Force of the Right have tabled a simple motion against the Liberal Minister of Finance, Marcel Boloş, whom they blame for skyrocketing expenses during his mandate.


    According to the motion initiators, in order to gather money for the government, Boloş and Ciolacu have decided to cut the tax payers incomes with another round of tax raises, which have seriously affected the small enterprises. The two would have opted for a short-term financial gain at the expense of long-term stability and prosperity.


    From the ruling coalition, PSD MP, Gabriel Zetea has defended his team underlying the government must resort to measures aimed at curbing public spending. Public institutions must prove their readiness to save public money at the end of the year.


    Next year, Zetea pledges, fiscal adjustment measures are to come into effect for private entrepreneurs. Political analysts are also expecting a happier 2024 for the public and private sector alike as the entire political class will be focusing on winning the electorate and muster votes in the upcoming elections, for the European Parliament, as well as in the local, legislative and presidential elections.


    (bill)


  • The profile of the Romanian tourist

    The profile of the Romanian tourist

    For about a quarter
    of Romanians, going on holiday is a treat they almost always cannot afford for
    themselves. However, there are other Romanians who, all throughout the year,
    can have a holiday combination of at least a four-night stay and a mini-holiday,
    according to specialist surveys that are published periodically. The main
    reasons why people go on holiday are the need for them to have some recreation,
    to cut themselves off from the stress of daily life, to have fun, but also to
    reward themselves for the work throughout the year.


    The summer of 2023
    has come to an end. Reason enough for us to outline the profile of the Romanian
    tourist. Who is he ? What are his favorite destinations? How much money are they willing to spend? We have the perfect opportunity to look into that,
    since the World Tourism Day is celebrated on September 27!


    Our guide through the
    habits of Romanian tourists is Cristina Popa. For quite a few years now,
    Cristina has been an entrepreneur in the area. Since 1996, when she graduated from
    the Tourism Faculty, Cristina has been organizing trips, city-breaks, safaris or
    exotic getaways. Many of the groups of tourists are accompanied by Cristina
    herself. Reason enough for us to describe Cristina as someone who has become very
    familiar with the habits of the Romanian tourist.


    The Romanian
    tourist’s perspective, that has changed a little bit!. He began to travel to further
    destination more, as the fees there are not very high as compared to what
    Europe can offer, what with the expenses there, a lot smaller than in Europe. In
    the past years France and Spain were extremely sought-after, just as they are
    now, they started to head for Kenya or for Mauritius or for the Maldives very
    often. Now
    Zanzibar has become quite trendy for a couple of years now. There are offers where
    they have the chance to buy affordable flight tickets, the value for money is very,
    very good for those destinations.


    We also asked
    Cristina Popa if the Romanians, as tourists, are picky.


    Some people are picky. I had
    a group in Zanzibar and those people there wanted to have everything at their
    fingertips straight away, as they were used to that, at home, not being able to
    take into account they were on another continent where people moved differently.
    There they say polé polé, take your time, take your time, and if you
    wanted to have the waiter fetch your beer at the table, having ordered it, it
    took them half an hour for that, while getting the food brought at the table,
    that lasted for about three hours. They move differently. If you, as a tourist,
    can accept the fact that you are at another destination, in another zone, on
    another continent, where things are different as compared to Romania or Europe,
    then you should have no problem. We can make things more difficult for ourselves
    because we cannot accept those who are different from us and with whom we have not
    grown accustomed to.


    In recent years, the rather unpleasant
    situations for us all, as a society, have grown on us, we had the Covid, while as we
    speak, we have the war at the border with Ukraine, there also was the energy
    crisis and rampant inflation, so less money, for some…How has all that influenced
    Romanians’ holiday habits? Cristina Popa once again.


    The clients I
    have in my portfolio were not necessarily influenced by that. The Covid, that
    of course slowed us all down a little bit since travel regulations at that time
    were different. If you had the vaccine or the test, there were not unpleasant
    situations. Our clients continued to travel…


    …And spend…But how much they spent,
    here is Cristina Popa once again, telling all that.


    There are fees from
    500-600 Euro per person per stay, in Bulgaria and Greece, there are also fees ranging
    from 900 to about 2,000 Euros per person for other destinations. I’ve just had
    a group in the Maldives, they paid around 2,000 Euros per person so they were
    willing to pay more, I could see they wanted so much to travel to areas they
    had never been to before, and to me, that is magic because, well, that is what we are left with, eventually, with what we get to see.


    Apart from the holidays we might
    call classic, our guide, apart from being faithful to Romanians’ tourism
    preferences, organizes another kind of tourism as well. For children and
    teenagers aged 10 to 14, Cristina Popa offers that sort of tourism where
    personal development blends into leisure.


    I
    have begun, for three years now, to offer that kind of tourism too, for
    children and teenagers, those personal development camps. We go to guesthouses
    that have been authorized to stage such camps, but which are different, they do
    not give you that feeling you’re on a school camp, as we do not want that. We
    want the children to discover themselves and realize the abilities they have been
    endowed with, and do whatever pleases them. So, for instance, this year I staged
    an intuition workshop so they can see how they can listen to their intuition
    themselves. We stage creativity, painting, drawing workshops, all sorts of
    self-confidence workshops, so they can discover themselves.


    Summer has come to an
    end, children have returned to school, their parents have exhausted their
    summer holidays. However, for Cristina Popa or for her colleagues we can hardly
    speak about relaxing. And that, because the Romanians keep going on holiday,
    irrespective of the season.

    In October
    I go the Island of Egina with a group, in November I’ll be off to Cuba, for
    February I stage a trip to Sri Lanka for the families with children. So we no
    longer have that time of the year we all know, when September or October come and we relax! As we speak, we can’t complain, we have an uninterrupted inflow of tourists, provided the social and world circumstances allow that.



  • Government to save more money

    Government to save more money


    With revenue receipts in the first part of the year lower than the estimates, the Romanian government finds itself in the situation of resorting to more spending cuts in an attempt to maintain the budget deficit within its admitted limits. After having assessed the budget structure, experts cautioned over the possibility of overrated budgeted revenues and underrated expenses, as early as last year.


    The coalition government in Bucharest is expected to officially make public the reform package aimed at saving billions of euros by the end of the year. The aforementioned measures have been listed in a draft bill to be approved in the first government sitting. The countrys Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca has again given assurances the measures arent going to affect salaries, jobs or investment as they arent austerity measures but aimed at streamlining the economy.


    Nicolae Ciuca: “Through these fiscal measures, we are going to approve after having made a decision within the coalition, we want to make sure we are going to meet the deficit target. And we are not speaking here of austerity measures because we have seen in the past years that not only the Romanian economy, but any other economy cannot develop and function within its normal parameters based on austerity measures. However, we can definitely speak about improvement measures and the appropriate management of public money.”


    In turn, Finance Minister, Adrian Câciu, explains that it all comes down to streamlining public spending so that it may create the needed fiscal room for support measures for the economy and people. Various publications in Romania have already made public the aforementioned bill aimed at curbing expenditures, which also provides for freezing state employment in 2023 and canceling any pay rise. So personnel expenses in public institutions arent going to exceed those in 2022.


    The bill also provides for procurement and bans any purchase, hire or lease takeovers of cars or office equipment. Only the newly-established public authorities and institutions as well as investment objectives are exempted from this decision. The ordinance also bans the pension-salary accumulation for a state employee except for those working as teachers in various education institutions as well as the specialized personnel in medical units. The measure also targets pensioners from the armed forces, including the incumbent Prime Minister, who is a career serviceman. According to political sources, the document hasnt been endorsed by the coalition yet.


    Against the background of the latest debates on the appropriate public spending, pundits are asking a legitimate question: why temperance and discipline in spending public money are being considered only at times of budget deficit?


    (bill)


  • December 26, 2021 UPDATE

    December 26, 2021 UPDATE

    CHRISTMAS New Style Orthodox Christians, and Greek and Roman Catholic Christians
    around the world Sunday celebrated the second day of Christmas. In Eastern
    Christianity, this day is devoted to Mary, mother of God. In his Nativity
    service on the 25th December, Daniel, Patriarch of Romania spoke about the
    meaning of the gifts presented by the 3 kings to the new-born Jesus.At the Vatican, Pope Francis warned that the world is growing so insensitive
    to crises and suffering that these now go unnoticed. Old Style Orthodox believers in Russia, Ukraine,
    Serbia, and Georgia celebrate Christmas on 7th January.


    COVID-19 As many as 349 new SARS-CoV-2 infection cases have been reported
    for the past 24 hours, along with 15 related fatalities, the Strategic
    Communication Group announced on Sunday. Some 450 patients are in intensive
    care, over 90% of them being unvaccinated. One year since the start of the Covid vaccine roll-out in Romania,
    nearly 7.8 million Romanians are fully vaccinated, and around 2 million also
    have the booster dose. This indicates that interest in vaccination has not been
    high, except for a few brief periods of enthusiasm or fear triggered by the
    pandemic’s successive waves.


    EXPENSES The president of Romania Klaus Iohannis travelled abroad 16
    times this year, with expenses totalling over 1.5 million euros, according to
    the Presidency’s response to a question sent by AGERPRES news agency. The
    President’s office also announced that by 14 December, 971 decorations were
    awarded by the President, and 2 of them were returned by their recipients.


    STRATEGY The EU has a new
    strategy in place to compete with China – Global Getaway is a response to China’s
    2013 New Silk Roads, under which investments of 140 billion euros have been
    made so far. With the new instrument, the EU seeks to consolidate the digital
    sector, transports and the healthcare, education and research systems around the
    world. The investments planned until 2027 amount to 300 billion euro. The EU is also
    considering the option of introducing a European export credit mechanism to
    help ensure fairer competition conditions for EU
    companies in 3rd markets.


    UKRAINE Germany and Russia have agreed on a
    meeting in early January, between the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s foreign
    and security policy adviser Jens Ploetner, and Kremlin’s negotiator for Ukraine,
    Dmitry Kozak, as part of the efforts to settle the Russian-Western crisis over
    the Ukrainian border, AFP reports. For over a month now, Western countries have
    been accusing Russia of deploying more than 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian
    border for a possible military intervention, and have repeatedly warned Kremlin
    on this topic. Russia claims its military is not a threat to anybody and
    demands security guarantees from the West, especially with respect to NATO’s
    eastwards enlargement.



    SPORTS Romania’s men’s handball
    team is taking part as of Monday in a new edition of the traditional Carpați
    Trophy, hosted by the city of Cluj-Napoca (north-west). In the opening match,
    Romania plays against Turkey. On Tuesday Turkey take on Iran, and on Wednesday
    Iran plays against Romania. Originally chosen as the 4th participant,
    Switzerland eventually declined the invitation over several COVID-19 cases
    found amid its players. After this training tournament, Romanian handballers
    are playing in Cluj on 7-9 January in the World Championship qualifiers,
    against the national teams of Israel, Cyprus and
    the Republic of Moldova. (tr. A.M. Popescu)