Speaking at the presentation of the bank’s quarterly inflation report, Isarescu said the government’s planned excise duty of EUR0.7 per liter of fuel should have a limited impact on the annual inflation, of 0.2 percentage points.
However, the 2014 projections do not incorporate the potential effects of higher excise taxes for other categories of products, Isarescu said. The central bank will be able to factor in the additional data once the new calculation methodology is published, he added.
The central bank Thursday revised its forecast for the 2013 and 2014 inflation to 1.8% and 3%, respectively. Previously, the bank had estimated an annual rate of 3% for December 2013 and of 3.1% for the end of 2014.
Romania’s government announced earlier this week a series of new fiscal measures, in a bid to boost revenues and balance up planned increases of public salaries and pensions.
The new measures include a new calculation system for excise taxes, which will be indexed to inflation starting with 2014. So far, Romania has used the exchange rate of the leu announced by the European Central Bank on the first working day of October of the previous year.
By changing the calculation method, the authorities hope to collect additional revenues of 3.44 billion lei (EUR776 million) in 2014.