District mayor Negoita: Government boasts about handouts given from our money

The President of the Romanian Association of Municipalities, Robert Negoita, reproached the Government that it "boasts" measures such as exempting people working in construction from income tax, although this affects the budget of the local authorities. "We have seen that the Government often boasts about handouts given from our money. That is, we are exempting from income tax the people who work in construction. The Government boasts about this and has nothing to lose. But we are not able to pay salaries. Moreover, the impact is also negative due to the fact that all the contracts we have contain labour - some more, others less - and this increases our expense in some areas where we do not decide on and we find that we have lower revenues due to the Government and higher spending for the same reason," said Robert Negoita. Addressing Minister of Public Finances Eugen Teodorovici, Negoita said that the Government's projects are "commendable" but that they should be carried out from the budgets that the Executive manages. Teodorovici replied that these economic issues "should be otherwise discussed", while at the same time reproaching the fact that in Romania the political class has allowed itself to "grossly manipulate the public opinion" against the backdrop of a very low financial education level. AGERPRES (RO - author: Irinela Visan, editor: Antonia Nita; EN - author: Bogdan Gabaroi, editor: Simona Iacob)