The first target will be public servants, who will no longer receive incentives as a result of the slashing of 140,000 vacancies for which monies paid from the budget were redistributed among existing employees. However, this measure could be insufficient to reduce expenditures by 20 percent, which will lead to either a reduction in salaries in real terms or layoffs.
Sorin Ionita, Research Director of the Romanian Academic Society (SAR), believes that an audit must be carried out to identify the public and local administration areas in which reductions, mentioned by Minister of Finance designate, Gheorghe Pogea, in his Parliamentary Commission hearings, can be applied. “The elimination of vacancies is, however, the first measure that can be applied,” according to the SAR official for Business Standard. “I am unable to determine where additional cuts in expenditure can be made, but savings are impossible if new ministries, such as that of Tourism and Youth and Sports, are established,” added Ionita. In a debate on public administration, part of Business Standard’s Private Government project, Ionita focussed on the idea of establishing a database of this system, “whose exact costs and attributes are as yet unknown, even to the Prime Minister,” and “whose organization is sectorial.”
