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President Klaus Iohannis does not have good hands with prime ministers. So far, in just 6 years in office, he has spoken to 7: Ponta, Cioloş, Grindeanu, Tudose, Dăncilă, Orban and now Cîţu.
Basescu, in 10 years in office, had 4: Tariceanu, Boc, Mihai Răzvan Ungureanu (I think people forgot about him) and Ponta. Emil Constantinescu had 3 prime ministers in 4 years: Ciorbea, Radu Vasile and Isărescu. Ion Iliescu, in 10 years of mandate had 4 prime ministers: Roman, Stolojan, Văcăroiu and Năstase.
I hope that Florin Cîţu breaks this tradition of bad hand by Iohannis, especially since the president has his government, the result of parliamentary elections, with a majority in Parliament. Ciolos and Orban were at the Victoria Palace, but most were from the PSD.
Many people are surprised by the rise of Florin Cîţu, led by colleagues of his generation, economists and bankers, as well as colleagues from the bank or desk of the Treasury of ING Bank. It would be interesting to see the opinion of Mişu Negriţoiu, his former head of ING Bank who brought him in as an economist at the bank, promoted him to head of Treasury, and then the relationship ended in a lawsuit between Cîţu and ING following a job restructuring. Florin Cîţu lost that claim.
Not many political actors can boast of this political career. Florin Cîţu is the first banker and the first private sector entrant to make it to the head of the table at Victoria Palace. Isărescu was also in 1999-2000, but had come from the state, from the National Bank.
I don’t know what he will be like as prime minister; time, results and statistics will prove it. And especially the vote. I hope he does not bury the PNL and the ruling alliance, as Cioloş did with the technocratic government in 2016. I hope that after the AUR mandate he does not come to power.
But compared to PSD prime ministers like Viorica Dăncilă, Mihai Tudose, a prehistoric world compared to the current global world Romania is a part of, lives in the mentality that foreigners steal from us (what else to steal from Brăila, than Tudose, as a 20-year-old parliamentarian, brought him on a wooden hoe?) And even Sorin Grindeanu, who can’t boast of many things except that he took people out onto the streets, Florin Vasile Cîţu (as they like to call him PSD members, as if he should be ashamed of the name Vasile; Teleorman mentality) is light years away.
In Victoria Cîţu Palace he will do exactly what he did in the Ministry of Finance, that is, he will try to do well in the face of external and internal financial markets, he will speak with foreign banks, external and internal analysts, rating agencies, IMF, Bank. World Cup, with Brussels in the same language.
With this external image, the Ministry of Finance, the Government, Romania will be able to continue borrowing another 100 billion lei (I put a round figure) to maintain budget balance in a time of crisis in which we are all.
In fact, the Ministry of Finance will take loans of almost 150 billion lei, because to the budget deficit in 2021 will be added the refinancing of the existing public debt, which reaches maturity and which cannot be amortized, but refinanced.
With a budget deficit in 2021 of almost 100 billion lei, to which is added 100 billion lei this year (92 billion lei, in fact), Romania’s public debt will quickly exceed 500 billion lei. lei, that is, more than 50% of GDP.
With 60% of GDP, a level that will be reached in 2022-2023, Romania will enter the red list of warnings.
A clarification: even if the PSD had been in power or someone else, the Ministry of Finance would still have had to borrow the same amount, almost 100 billion lei, to cover the budget deficit of 8-9% of GDP , and implicitly the public debt of Romania would have been increased.
The Orban government, with Florin Cîţu, finance minister and de facto head of the Treasury (because Tiberiu Mavrodin, the director of the Treasury, led him to his death) made this huge budget deficit in 2020 because half belongs to this Covid crisis -19.
Cîţu left liquidity in the economy through tax exemptions, taxes, deferrals, technical unemployment (not only in Romania, but all over the world), the moratorium on the payment of bank fees, the SME Invest program (which costs the state budget , even if the money is given by the banks) plus faster payment of invoices, more faster VAT refunds, etc.
All of this money went to the accounts of private and state companies, plus employee accounts. It is true that part of the money went to companies or party chambers.
I hope that Florin Cîţu, as Prime Minister, will send the control body to see how the sanitary materials in warehouses rot, acquired at a surcharge through contracts of more than 200 million euros that he, as Minister of Finance, will do -funded.
With the help of the NBR, which lowered the benchmark interest rate and started buying government securities on the secondary market, Florin Cîţu avoided a Romanian crisis on the government stock market in March and April, when banks were extremely reluctant to lend. Treasury.
When the crisis started, the yield on Romanian government securities had risen to more than 6% and the finances had severe liquidity problems, but after the quick intervention of the NBR interest rates fell to 4% and the Treasury managed get into debt without problems.
From this point of view, the National Bank and Florin Cîţu spoke the same language, they had the same goal, unlike in previous years, in which PSD inflated its muscles to show Isărescu who is the boss.
When I was in the ministry, Florin Cîţu kept pedaling on the idea that the Orban government places more emphasis on investment than consumption, as PSD did, but it did nothing but pay some bills for some projects started earlier, I think of the time. to Boc, when the tube started at Camp Road. Stadiums for Euro 2020-2021 started during PSD. I do not recall any major projects being started during the Orban administration, most of which were in the feasibility study or tender stage.
For the rest, as Minister of Finance, Florin Cîţu did not stand out for anything other than his presence on Facebook, where he moved his office, where I always read that “Romanians should know or find out”, but I never found out. what. We did not know what Teodorovici, the former Finance Minister, did, how he sold us to the Russians through the International Investment Bank, we did not know what the PSD did, more than was already known through statistical data.
I do not think that Florin Cîţu, as prime minister, wants to make a budgetary revolution in Romania, he will not cut blood, he will not touch expenses (between 20-30% of budget expenses have overestimated prices), he will not restructure the budget fanariot apparatus . It will take time to take steps to restructure the budget (90% of the revenue goes towards the payment of salaries and budget pensions), in the hope that the economic recovery, at best in 2022-2023, will fill the gap of tough measures which will have a negative electoral effect for the PNL and the ruling coalition.
I think those of ANAF also laugh at the empty phrases of the government program that aim to increase budget revenues, digitize the institution or other reorganization and restructuring measures.
I do not know if he will have the will and the strength to follow like a bulldog the program of implementation of the necessary measures to attract billions of euros from the resilience fund created at the European Union level. And here I mean the money that is free, but for which you have to do documentation, have projects, etc.
There will be no problem with the money borrowed from the European Union to be returned. I do not think that he will undertake any personnel budgetary restructuring so that, in 4 years, the bill for the payment of state salaries will drop from 1.24 million employees to 1 million employees.
With 9% of GDP, how much the salaries of public employees cost, Romania will not be able to live very long except by raising taxes to cover this money.
Through the government program, Prime Minister Cîţu did not assume concrete figures, as he demanded of previous governments when he was an economist at ING.
I hope Florin Cîţu doesn’t stay at the Victoria Palace long enough to pass until he reaches the National Bank. However, it is noteworthy that he had the courage to enter the political mire, because it is not so easy to be cursed every day, and it is not so easy to listen to the PSD playboy, Orlando Teodorovici (who did not enter Parliament because too many people didn’t vote for him) saying, “You look like a cypress, can’t you see you’re stupid!”
From the sidelines, everyone has the best ideas, the best opinions on what to do, the decisions to be made by a minister, a government, what needs to be reformed and restructured, etc., but there are not many people in it. the private sector that wants to do it. Enter the political abyss.
Politics is not done on the sidelines.
And Florin Cîţu took this on and won.
I hope that from your position as a politician you remember macroeconomics and why you said when you were an economist how to balance economic balances.
And I also hope that, after 4 years, when his term ends, we will not end up regretting Cioloş, Grindeanu, Dăncilă, and last but not least Mihai Tudose, with whom the PSD continues to march in the 21st century.
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