PM Orban says public investment to be first pillar of Romania's economic reconstruction

The first pillar of Romania's economic reconstruction that the Government is thinking of is public investment in transport, energy infrastructure, health, education, communications and agriculture, Prime Minister Ludovic Orban said on Tuesday. "We are working on a plan of economic and social measures. The plan will include several categories of measures. The first pillar of economic reconstruction we are thinking about is the pillar of public investment, where we try to mobilise all resources to provide funding for major transport infrastructure projects, energy infrastructure, health infrastructure, education, communications and agriculture," Orban said at a meeting of the Tripartite National Council. He underscored that the Government will have to identify the financial resources to support the investment projects. "No matter how good our intentions, we can only apply those measures for which we have the necessary resources, and we are taking stock of all the necessary resources that are available to us apart from the government's receipts. An inventory of such revenues is extremely important because we will have to size this program and, particularly, all the measures that we will adopt should fit the financial resources that we actually have, resources that can be mobilised in a realistic way, because otherwise, if we initiate without financial support we risk causing more harm to the economy," Orban said. According to him, the government is trying to mobilise financial resources from "all possible sources." "Both from institutional financiers, from the European funds that we have at our disposal in the financial year 2024 - 2020 and the funds from the financial year 2021 - 2027 for the subsequent measures. There are financial resources that we can mobilise by issuing securities, by loans that we raise either on the international market or on the domestic market. We are considering a mechanism of government bonds for individuals, the public, a wider issuance of securities in which to increase the financing capacity through these bonds that we will issue to the public; we are also trying to think about potential private financial resources that we can involve in these investment programs," said Orban. AGERPRES (RO - author: Daniel Florea, editor: Claudia Stanescu; EN - author: Corneliu-Aurelian Colceriu, editor: Rodica State)