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2014 - target year for EUR adoption

In the absence of an important progress in terms of budgetary and fiscal policies effectiveness, the target seems hardly reachable, as European Commissioner, Leonard Orban, warned in his turn.

Bucharest – The target 2014 for EUR adoption was the core idea explained by the Romanian officials who attended the forum “Socio – economic developments in Romania: maximum capitalization of the opportunities provided by the EU Lisbon Strategy on growth and jobs.” “The next major target for Romania is having EUR adopted as a currency. We need to explicitly undertake 2014. This is a realistic target only provided that we use political responsibility in handling public expenditures and condition upon the provision of coherent multi-annual planning and budgetary implementation mechanisms”, President Traian Basescu said, according to Rompres. The European Commissioner Leonard Orban specified that in the absence of progress in relation to the effectiveness of budgetary and fiscal policies, the target 2104 for the adoption of EUR is hardly reachable. Orban specified that within the analysis made, which the Council of EU Finance Ministers approved, the Commission made recommendations to encourage the actions needed for the target to be reached. Leonard Orban said that the EU Executive is of the opinion that “in the absence of decisive measures in the field, without an important progress in the effectiveness of budgetary and fiscal policies, the target 2012 for the intermediary mechanism and 2014 for having EUR adopted remain unlikely.” Romania is still in a favourable economic situation, but which may not last several years and hence emergency measures should be adopted for transforming the national economy into a genuine competitive one, the European Commissioner added. In his turn, FinMin, Varujan Vosganian, said, on Saturday, in Suceava, that Romania could adopt EUR as of January 1, 2014, the modality for shifting to this remaining to be decided by the National Bank. 3 of the 5 convergence criteria, accomplished Romania meets three of the five convergence criteria (Maastricht criteria), which are the value of the consolidated budgetary deficit, global public debt and exchange rate fluctuations, according to the chief economist of National Bank of Romania, Valentin Lazea. He showed that in relation to the fluctuations of the exchange rate (plus – minus 15 per cent of the reference value, based on the convergence criteria), Romania intends to join the Rate Exchange Mechanism II during 2011–2012, but the deviations from this value have not currently exceeded 15 per cent. Lazea indicated that the difficulties experienced by Romania are related to the inflation rate – 6.6 per cent at the end of 2007, which is over the reference value of 2.8 per cent. Yet, he added, in the first part of 2007, the expectations in Romania in relation to inflation exceeded the most optimistic forecasts, which is largely due to the appealing situation of our country for foreign investors, along with internal factors such as the surplus of the consolidated budget and the stability of the volatile prices. Valentin Lazea explained that several important services – such as tourism and transports – add deficit to the current account deficit, which is a unique situation among the EU Member States. Education, village infrastructure, investments in agricultural areas Lisbon Strategy is only effective provided that Romania acts in three directions: education, village infrastructure, investments in agricultural areas, Basescu said. The President affirmed that one of the important structural difficulties for Romania is the fact that agriculture accounts for 10 per cent of GDP and for 30 per cent of the occupied population. “The settlement of this issue requires vision and long term solutions. In order to reduce the share of the population occupied in agriculture, in 2020–2025, to 10 – 15 per cent, there is need to act towards raising yields and labour productivity in agriculture. This needs a fundamental transformation of work content in agriculture. On the other side, jobs have to be created for the labour force released from agriculture,” Basescu said. In his opinion, there is need for a “huge and coherent” effort in education, infrastructure works addressing village urbanization, integrated within a coherent concept of “polycentric development” along with facilitating investments in the agricultural regions. “One major target for Romania on medium and long term is to reduce energy intensity, in parallel with sustainable supply of energy and security in energy resource supply, with raising Romania’s contribution to the efforts of reducing greenhouse gas and environment protection and not lastly, the construction of new infrastructures and the upgrading of the existent ones, with direct reference to the highway programme and modernization of railway infrastructure,” Traian Basescu indicated. Progress in justice Foreign Minister, Lazar Comanescu, declared, on Friday, within the forum, that within the European Commission, there is a perception according to which progress has already been accomplished in Romania in the field of Justice, in the light of the report to be presented in mid July. In his turn, the European Commissioner Leonard Orban said that it was premature to comment in relation to the report to be presented in mid July. Sursa: http://www.nineoclock.ro

Tags: romania which agriculture orban european adoption progress budgetary target

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