PM Citu: I am not nervous, it will be the first time when a clean budget passes Parliament

Prime Minister Florin Citu on Tuesday stated that he is not at all nervous about the vote in Parliament on the state budget for 2021, adding that this will be the first time when a clean budget passes through the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. "No, I am not nervous, you saw how the debate took place in the committees. I think that this will be the first time when a budget passes cleanly through the Romanian Parliament," Citu said at the event "Digitization of Romania, priority ZERO," organised by DC News Media Group. According to the head of the Executive, the draft state budget for 2021, as configured, cannot be classified as one of austerity. "First of all, this word austerity actually means cuts, and I challenge you to find such cuts in the budget. (...) In fact, the budget has a total expenditure increase of almost 5pct, up to 444.9 billion lei, and we cannot talk about austerity when expenditures grow. Also, if we look at investments, the spending increases by almost 8.3 billion lei, so there is no austerity to talk about. There is an increase in personnel expenditures too, in social assistance expenditures, pensions, allowances, etc., the increase is up to almost 10.2 billion lei, so there is no area where we have cuts, that's why I don't understand this connection with austerity, apart from the political discourse. In exchange, I expect specialists, professionals, to really look at the budget and see how it is built," Florin Citu explained. AGERPRES (RO - author: Daniel Florea, editor: Claudia Stanescu, EN - author: Cristina Zaharia, editor: Adina Panaitescu)