Fiscal Council chairman Ionut Dumitru warns again that the 3 percent of GDP budget deficit target may not be met in 2018 and most likely, further adjustment measures will have to be taken next year.
”We do not know how the fiscal policy will look like in 2018. At the moment, we have a fiscal package that is approved but we do not know how the budget will look. (…) What we know right now is that, given the measures already adopted, perhaps the 3 percent target is still far, our forecasts show a deficit above this value. (..) Before this fiscal package and the contributions transfer, we had a deficit projection quite high – 4 – 4.5 percent. At the moment, there is still a fairly significant gap,” Dumitru explained.
He said that measures recently adopted by the Government, the package as a whole, as estimated by the Ministry of Finance, will have a negative impact of about RON 5.1 billion.
At the same time, the Fiscal Council official stressed that a too strong stimulation of demand, consumption, boosts imports and does not help too much the global economy, but rather other economies.
Moreover, he also noted that RON/EUR exchange rate will not appreciate as long as the economic fundamentals, such as the trade balance deficit, the current account deficit and the budget deficit, are not improving.