Budget deficit target to go up to 2.5% of GDP

Finance minister Sebastian Vladescu confirmed on Wednesday at the Government headquarters that the budget deficit target for this year would be increased from 0.9% set after the April adjustment, to 2.5% of GDP, estimated at 90 billion euros. The announcement was made after a meeting between the finance minister, Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu and the NBR’s governor Mugur Isarescu. The budget deficit target for this year has been successively modified from 0.5% to 0.9%, to 2% and then to 2.5% of the GDP, a level that marks the first rise in the domestic public deficit in the last five years. If the budget had maintained its 0.5% deficit target this year, this would have been the sixth consecutive decline in the budget deficit, from the 4% of the GDP attained in 2000.