May 8, 2023 UPDATE
A roundup of local and international news.
Newsroom, 08.05.2023, 19:53
ORDINANCE — The ruling coalition made up of PNL, PSD and UDMR on Monday decided to cut by 10% the ministries’ expenditure with goods and services and ban the purchase of vehicles, furniture and other non-essential goods. The announcement was made by PM Nicolae Ciuca on a social network. He also said the number of advisers with the government members’ offices will be reduced by half. The Social Democrat leader Marcel Ciolacu posted the same message. He also said the Government will support the purchase of farm products directly from Romanian farmers, for all public institutions, to exclude any intermediaries. The measures will be included in an emergency order which the Government plans to pass this week.
FORECAST — The National Commission for Strategy and Prognosis maintains at 2.8% the Romanian economy’s growth forecast in 2023 and has revised downwards, from 8% to 7.4%, the inflation forecast for the year-end, in the context of a larger than estimated decrease in the price of oil and of other energy products. According to a release on Monday, the labour market will be on a positive trend on the medium-term, offering good perspectives to all categories of salaries. Thus, until 2026, the number of employees in Romania is likely to go up at an annual pace of 2%.
PROJECTS – The Finance Ministry in Bucharest is working jointly with the World Bank on defining the indicators which the Romanian state must observe when making green investments, including with projects included in the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, State Secretary Mihai Precup said. He also said the legal framework for the launch of the first green bond issue by the Romanian state is being drawn up. The challenge will be to find enough resources to co-finance these projects, Precup said.
CYBERSECURITY – As of this week Bucharest is hosting the European Cybersecurity Industrial, Technology, and Research Competence Centre, which is meant to improve cyber-resilience and support cybersecurity research across the EU. The agency will be cooperating with a network of national centers in the EU countries. In December 2020, EU representatives picked Romania to host the cybersecurity agency from among other applicants like Belgium, Germany, Spain, Luxembourg, Poland and Lithuania. Bucharests advantages were its high-speed Internet, the agency’s exemption from a number of taxes and duties and the fact that the city has not been hosting any European agency.
SUBSIDIES – Romanias Agriculture Minister Petre Daea says that the greengrocers who are still using toxic substances will no longer receive subsidies. The statement was made following an investigation which proved that many farmers put on sale vegetables sprinkled with toxic substances up to 8 times over the legal quantities. The minister says the authorities will be monitoring the farmers benefitting from state subsidies for the greenhouse cultivation of vegetables so that no toxic vegetables can reach the market. The police have conducted many searches in the counties of Buzau and Ilfov, in southern Romania, where they found hundreds of containers with chemical substances from Turkey, whose concentrations proved to be higher than those approved by EU legislation. The greengrocers used these substances to artificially enhance the ripening of their products and sell them on the market for higher prices. According to police sources, in some cases these toxic vegetables were sold as organic products. (EE)
