Deputies' spending at almost 92 ml lei in first six months of the year

The deputies' spending in the first six months of the year amounts to 91,849,485 lei, shows data released on the website of the Chamber of Deputies. The month-by-month breakdown is as follows: January - 14,294,989 lei; February - 14,362,077 lei; March - 16,018,184 lei; April - 15,870,539 lei; May - 15,586,634 lei; June - 15,716,962 lei. The figures represent the lawmakers' earnings, daily allowance for traveling to the Palace of Parliament Palace and to their constituencies, accommodation, transport and phone costs, expenditures with the parliamentary offices operating in constituencies and for trips abroad. The deputies' total incomes in H1 stood at 21,662,894 lei. The travel allowance for the lawmakers' trips to the Palace of Parliament and their constituencies amounted to 4,821,086 lei in the first half of the year; accommodation expenses represented 6,724,015 lei; transport expenses - 5,187,392 lei, and mobile phone expenses - 152,798 lei. Expenses with the activity of parliamentary offices operating in constituency colleges stood at 52,116,808 lei. The lawmakers' 78 trips abroad between January - June cost 1,184,492 lei. The most expensive such trip was the participation of three persons in the American Jewish Committee's Global Forum held in Washington in June, specifically 104,816 lei for three and a half days out of the country plus the participation in the event. Other costly trips were the participation of three people, for six days, in the meeting of the Inter-parliamentary Union on the sidelines of the 63rd session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women and related events this March, with spending worth 89,401; the participation of three persons, for seven days and a half, in the 140th Assembly of the Inter-parliamentary Union and at the related events that took place in Qatar this April - with 69,689 lei; the participation of seven people in the first part of the 2019 Ordinary Session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, this January, with 60,231 lei; the participation of a three-member delegation of the Romanian Group to the Inter-parliamentary Union in the UN Parliamentary Hearing held this February in New York, with 65,675 lei spent for five days and a half. AGERPRES (RO - author: Florentina Peia, editor: Catalina Matei; EN - author/editor: Simona Klodnischi)