Basescu: Romania at risk of going into economic crisis again

President Traian Basescu said on Tuesday there are barriers to a re-start of the economy in Romania and the country is at risk of going into a time of economic crisis again, after the Government had used less state budget money for investments and directed it to social security instead.

'If Romania was one of the countries having committed itself to fast solutions and such solutions gave the results by restoring the macroeconomic balances, by falling again within the budget deficits and, quite spectacularly, attaining the five Maastricht criteria, this does not mean Romania does not have problems. /.../ There is an area at risk in the Romanian economy, the area which is owned by the state. We also have other risk areas in our economy. Maybe it is not correct to call them risk areas, but barriers to increasing the number of jobs and re-starting the economy', Basescu said.
He cited such barriers as 'the precarious infrastructure, which could have been in an utterly different state if the cohesion funds had been used. We delay building motorways, we build them too slowly and sometimes at too high a price, the same goes for the railways', the Romanian president told the Forbes CEE Forum on the topic 'The Resumption of Sustainable Growth in the Emerging Markets' organized in the Romanian capital.
Basescu stressed that a barrier that is in the hands of the Government and can be removed is education.

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