Early October, Finance Minister Ioana Petrescu said the formula that will be used to compute excise duty rates in 2015 is being analyzed by a workgroup. Petrescu declined to say whether excise duties will still be computed based on a lower exchange rate announced by the European Central Bank (ECB), which triggers lower rates.
Romania’s Minister-delegate for the budget, Darius Valcov, subsequently said the method needed to compute excise duties for 2015 had not been established yet, adding the formula may no longer depend on the euro, but on the leu.
The ECB announced an exchange rate of 4.4093 lei per euro on October 1, 2014 (an indicator used by the government to compute excise duty rates), which is 0.88% lower than the exchange rate of 4.4485 lei per euro announced in 2013.
Excise duties should be lower starting 2015 if calculated based on the exchange rate announced by the ECB.