Ponta also said the government will introduce a fuel tax of 7 eurocents per liter, for both gasoline and diesel oil, and the money obtained will be poured into a special fund for investments in the road infrastructure.
Government sources said last week that excise levels could be calculated as of 2014 by indexing current levels for inflation instead of basing calculations on the currency exchange rate set by the European Central Bank.
Minister-delegate for Budget Liviu Voinea previously told online newspaper Gandul.info in an interview the Government is considering widening taxable income to fill in the revenue-expenses gap in the budget for 2014 and wants to set a new formula to compute excise duties. However, he did not expand on the Cabinet’s plans for excise level calculations.
So far, Romania has been calculating excise levels in euros, using the currency exchange rate set by the European Central Bank on October 1, which this year was lower than in 2012 and lowered collections to the state budget. The European Central Bank set a rate of RON4.4485 to the euro on October 1 this year, 1.6% lower than last year’s RON4.5223 to the euro, used for the calculation of excise duty levels in 2013.
The change in calculation methodology was agreed upon with the International Monetary Fund, the sources said.
Joint teams from the IMF and the European Commission arrived in Bucharest on October 22 for the first review of Romania’s progress under a EUR4 billion loan program approved earlier this year. The IMF team and Ponta have met at the Government for talks Monday evening.