The Government has announced today that the state budget draft for 2021 had been sent in Parliament for debate and vote.
Liberals would like the budget draft to be adopted by Friday, February 26.
According to the procedure, after the budget bill is in Parliament, deputies and senators will have several days to file amendments. After that the bill is debated in the special committees and in the plenary session.
Social Democrats have already announced that they would file “thousands of amendments” to the bill. Sorin Grindenau told a press conference that his party has its own version of the 2021 budget, arguing that the differences between the PSD version and the one of the ruling coalition consists of “increasing the level of collecting taxes by countering tax evasion, recovering arrears and increasing the tax base.”
A day ago, Liberals decided in a party meeting that they will file no amendment, to prevent “any pressure to the budget” and to prevent “the deficit of 7.16% from rising”. USR-PLUS and UDMR also announced they have no amendments.
However, the final draft of the budget law is different from the initial version, with the budgets of many institutions being amended, including those related to the Health, Education, Interior, Foreign Affairs and Transport ministries.
The cash deficit remains the same, 7.16%o of GDP (RON 80 billion) and 8.23% ESA deficit.
Health Ministry gets RON 17.49 billion, by RON 50.7 million more than initially. Education Ministry has allotted over RON 28.5 billion, by RON 1.75 million more than the initial draft budget.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will also get more money, RON 1.11 billion overall, by 1.075 more than the 2020 budget.
Interior Ministry also gets additional RON 11.1 million compared to the initial version, totalling RON 20.9 bln.
The Transports portfolio has a total budget of RON 14.2 billion, more by RON 20 million than the initial draft budget and higher by 9.4% compared to 2020.