The European Commission will analyse on Wednesday, March 24, Romania's Convergence Programme, a chief document for official analysis at a European level. Excerpts of this document obtained by HotNews.ro show that Romania intends to reduce the structural deficit below 1% of he GDP by 2014, managing a "margin sufficient to avoid going over the 3% of the GDP budget deficit".

The Romanian authorities have not made public the draft sent to the European Commission. The Executive in Brussels announced that it will analyse the programme on Wednesday, March 24, and the commissioner for economic and monetary affairs Olli Rehn will hold a press conference on this issue.

Excerpts of the official document also show that:

  • "on short-term, the Government's priority continues to be connected to the economic re-launch, the creation of work places and assuring public finance sustainability. Despite the reduced fiscal space following previous years' expansionist macroeconomic policy, the Government reacted promptly in 2009 and put into practice a programme with anti-crisis measures through a series of consistent measures meant to stabilise the economy and resume the economic growth process."

The medium-term economic strategy for which the Romanian Government took responsibility in the Convergence Programme targets:

  • resuming the economic growth process and crating new work places;
  • adjusting public deficit and current account deficit to figures that make finance and the continuation of the process of cutting inflation possible;
  • protecting those categories of the population most affected by the economic crisis;
  • the improvement of predictability and fiscal policy performance on medium-term and maximising and using European Union funds efficiently;
  • assuring public finance sustainability on long-term;
  • restructuring and making public administration activity efficient;
  • the firm implementation of the engagements taken in the foreign multilateral financial agreement with the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission, World Bank and other international financial institutions.

The Government’s medium-term priorities included in the Convergence Programme are almost identical with the ones from last year.