The conference is attended by state secretaries in Finance Ministry Dan Manolescu and Enache Jiru, central bank deputy governors (Florin Georgescu, Bogdan Olteanu, Liviu Voinea), head of the Association of Financial-Banking Analysts in Romania, Radu Craciun, IMF Resident Representative in Romania, Guillermo Tolosa, economists and business environment representatives.
“The opportunity of a fiscal relaxation of such proportions is questionable, given that the cyclical position of the economy shows that this year we might witness a very high economic growth, compared with initial estimations, meaning that we might face an excess demand starting with this year. Under these circumstances, the opportunity of an incentive focused mainly on the consumption zone is questionable in the moment when consumption has a rather important growth, of nearly 5% in real terms,” Dumitru said.
The head of the Fiscal Council added that Romania might get caught in the toils of the procyclicality of fiscal policy, namely push the accelerator pedal when the economy is already accelerating, a mistake which has already been made in the past and should not be repeated.
Dumitru added that a continuation of the public debt increase would make the country very vulnerable ahead of a future recession.