Finance Minister Adrian Câciu has stated that the reform stipulated in the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) will be carried out "as planned" and that GDP spending on service pensions will be reduced in line with PNRR’s provisions. When asked why this PNRR milestone had not been reached yet, Minister Câciu said that, in the meantime, the World Bank had issued a second report which contained several differences from the initial one, based on which the draft had been drawn up, and that solutions for reaching the milestone regarding special pensions would be presented in the following period.
The Gross Domestic Product in Q4/2022 was, in real terms, 1% higher than in the third quarter of 2022. Moreover, GDP grew by 4.6% as a gross series and by 4.9% as a seasonally adjusted series year-on-year. Both the gross and seasonally adjusted series of the quarterly GDP were recalculated following the revision of quarterly data for 2021. The estimated GDP for the fourth quarter of 2022 was RON 361,796 million at current prices.
Euro area economy stagnated and the European Union’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) contracted in the last three months of 2022, according to Eurostat data. Greece recorded the highest increase in GDP compared to the third quarter, of 1.4%, followed by Malta (1.2%), Cyprus (1.1%) and Romania (1%). In its initial estimate published last month, Eurostat had reported that euro area economy had grown by 0.1% quarter-on-quarter and had recorded a 1.9% year-on-year advance.
One in three Romanian women would be happy if they earned a net monthly salary of at least EUR 1,000, and almost a third (32%) believe that the threshold of personal net monthly income they would feel content at is at least EUR 2,000, according to a survey by financial app Revolut. The study was conducted in January 2023, on a sample of 1,000 respondents in Romania, representative of the population aged 18 and over, on age segments, by region and gender.
CEC Bank grants loans through the New Home program in 2023 as well, with interest rates starting from 7.61% (IRCC + 1.90%), for those who cash their salary into an account opened with the bank, a 0.4% lower value than the one for standard mortgage loans. The New Home loans offered by CEC Bank have zero analysis/granting fees and zero maintenance fees. CEC Bank has been a partner of the governmental program for 14 years and is among the top three banks in terms of financing granted at national level within the program in 2022.
BLIK, the leader of the market of payment systems in Poland, has been launched in Romania, the second biggest market in Central and Eastern Europe. BLIK Romania, the newly established company, will develop a unique and innovative digital payments system in RON that will bring a several major advantages, including high security and simplification of payments by generating and using an individual six-digit code for each transaction made online. In this first phase, the system operator will focus on implementing the solution in e-commerce.
The subsidiary in Romania of the Swedish group Lindab, which has a metal tile roofing and other building materials plant in Ștefăneștii de Jos lcality, Ilfov County, has invested more than EUR 200,000 for the installation of a photovoltaic panel system at its production facility. In Romania, Lindab has three business divisions operating under the same brand. These are the production of roofing systems, metal halls and ventilation and air conditioning systems.
Bihor County Council has applied for European funding through the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) for the construction of the school campus for dual education, a project worth RON 147 million (over EUR 29 million), VAT included. Bihor County Council’s own contribution to the eligible project value is RON 20.8 million, VAT not included, and represents 20% of the eligible expenses.
Bento, a Romanian company which specializes in the development and implementation of software solutions and the provision of IT infrastructure and Cloud services, has announced the signing of a RON 32 million contract for the implementation of its software solution Bento Field Service Management (Bento FSM). The company has won a public procurement procedure carried out by Distribuție Energie Electrică România (DEER), a company owned by Electrica.
A draft law submitted to the Senate on Tuesday, 7 March, by MPs from the main political parties proposes granting holiday vouchers to employees in the private sector as well, not only to public sector employees. The sums corresponding to the vouchers would be allocated annually from the state budget, from income taxes paid by each employee, according to the legislative proposal signed by 130 MPs from the National Liberal Party (PNL), the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania (UDMR). The method of payment of the equivalent value of holiday vouchers will be established by the Government, within maximum 30 days of the date when the law is promulgated by the President of Romania
The new compromise on the draft data law, seen by EURACTIV, further refines the protection of trade secrets and clarifies the relationship with data protection rules and the application of the cloud-switching provisions. The Swedish presidency shared the sixth compromise text on the Data Act on Wednesday (8 March), with the view of discussing it on 14 March at the Telecom Working Party, a technical body of the EU Council.
The minimum wage in Romania grew to RON 3,000, from RON 2,550, on 1 January 2023. However, this is the gross wage, which taxes are deducted from. This means that employees earn a net salary of RON 1,898. Even after this increase, Romania continues to have one of the lowest minimum wages in the European Union. Bulgaria and Hungary are the only countries in the community bloc where minimum wages are lower than in Romania.
During the period 2021 - 2027, mothers belonging to vulnerable groups will benefit from support measures worth over EUR 446 million, financed through the 2021-2027 Inclusion and Social Dignity Program and the 2021-2027 Education and Employment Program, the Ministry of Investments and European Projects announced. The measures thus target areas such as employment, support for single-parent families, for children with parents working abroad, and financial support for mothers and new-borns from vulnerable categories.