The Parliament has Okayed on Saturday the timetable of the debates on the 2019 state budget. The amendments will be filed by Monday, at 12:00, while the final vote is scheduled on Friday, February 15.
The special budget –finance committees in the Chamber of Deputies and Senate are expected to give their opinions on Monday, by 15:00hr.
The join plenary sitting to debate and adopt the draft budget for 2019 starts on Wednesday, at 16:00hr and the final vote is expected on Friday.
The Finance Ministry has released on Friday night, around 10 p.m., a new draft state budget with a different deficit, up by RON 1.3 billion than in the previous draft, released on January 31.
While the deficit has increased by RON 1.3 billion, the revenues have dropped by RON 184.5 million, and expenses have been up by RON 4.62 billion.
In retort, the opposition parties said the budget is not constitutional and that has not been consulted by all the parties in Parliament.
The leader of the Liberal deputies, Raluca Turcan said on Saturday that the ruling power has „intentionally” come up with an unconstitutional budget and that it has only to gain from the delay.
„At present, when the budget draft for 2019 has been loaded on the chamber’s website, the opposition has had no access to any information related to the draft”, Turcan argued.
The spokesperson of the National Liberal Party also posted on Facebook that the 2019 draft budget represents the same fiscal risks and vulnerabilities like in the previous years, adding that the budget is based on the overestimation of the revenues and the people who drafted the budget cannot be held responsible.
In her turn, the leader of the USR deputies, Cristian Pruna, said that the draft budget doesn’t belong to Romania, but to „a small group of people”. She added that the draft is the „product of some politicians’ creativity, who ignored the Parliament”.
The Government approved the state budget for 2019 last Friday.
In the past week, the budget allocations have stirred much debate, with the mayors arguing they will have no development funds and UDMR requesting money for local administrations. Sources say ALDE also had objections to the draft bill during the negotiations conducted with PSD leader Liviu Dragnea.
During the Government sitting were approved also the draft bill on the social security budget for 2019, the draft bill on capping certain indices within the fiscal-budgetary framework for 2019 and the Fiscal-budgetary strategy for 2019-2021.