It also pledges to complete projects unaccomplished by the former governments over the past ten years.
According to its 2013-2016 governing program, the new Government aims to:
– finish works on the Transilvania highway, an investment started about ten years ago, and build new highways;
– upgrade bridges and passageways, build 50 by-pass roads and upgrade 75% of the national road infrastructure;
– upgrade 60% of the 15,000 kilometers of public railway, and rent or close the remainder;
– grant profit tax exemptions for three years to investors in hotels, restaurants and theme parks, and five-year tax exemptions to investors in spa resorts;
– solve problems concerning stray dogs;
– set up an energy efficiency authority and grant fiscal and financial incentives for energy conservation projects;
– expand the exploration and exploitation activity of the crude oil and gas deposits in the Black Sea;
– encourage investments in finding new reserves of hydrocarbons;
– build reactors 3 and 4 at the Cernavoda nuclear plant, the Tarnita-Lapustesti hydropower plant, and new energy units at Galati, Borzesti and Braila in public-private partnership;
– attract capital for environment investments and new technologies, including the construction of new energy units at Hunedoara and Oltenia power plants;
– double the country’s underground natural gas storage capacity;
– promote new technologies and upgrade the equipments for exploiting lignite and uranium deposits;
– restructure tax authority ANAF, the Financial Guard and the customs authority and set up a supervision and audit council made up of European Union experts;
– cut the sales tax to 19%, social contributions by 5 percentage points, the sales tax for the basic food products to 9% and also reduce parafiscal taxes to half;
– introduce differentiated tax rates of 8%, 12% and 16% on salary income, which will be set based on income charts;
– gradually increase the minimum wage to 1,200 lei (EUR268) until 2016;
– support equal opportunities between women and men by removing salary gaps on the Romanian labor market;
– replace the state-supported “First Home” program with the “New Home” one, to ease the acquisition of new homes;
– increase the deductibility of costs with research and development (R&D) activities, from 20% to 50%;
– provide tax exemptions, for a five-year period, on dividends reinvested in technological equipment and R&D;
– stimulate the business environment for further macroeconomic stability by simplifying procedures and reducing red tape for small businesses;
– speed up the absorption of European Union funds;
– adopt a new law regulating small- and medium-sized enterprises, which will transpose the Small Business Act (SBA) into Romanian legislation;
The new governing program also includes several macroeconomic scenarios forecasting an economic growth of 2% in 2013, 3% in 2014, 3.3% in 2015 and 3.5% in 2015. The inflation rate for the next four years is seen at 3.5% in 2013, 3% in 2014, 2.5% in 2015 and 2.3% in 2016.
Romania’s ruling Social Liberal Union won around 60% of the seats in Parliament in elections on December 9. The list of minister nominees has been sent to Parliament Thursday and lawmakers are expected to assemble for a confidence vote on the new Cabinet soon.