All citizens of this country should know that the budget is extremely tight and giving more money to someone means cutting from someone else, the main reason being the fact that budget revenues in Romania are the lowest in Europe, of 27% of GDP, said on Thursday Valentin Lazea, chief economist at the National Bank of Romania (BNR), present at the Annual Conference of the Association of Financial and Banking Analysts from Romania.

"So, we have 27% [budget revenues] of GDP, an extremely small pie for which extremely many people are fighting. Until we understand that we all have to pay state taxes, because when introduced the single quota, so they said, we make a small single quota, but let everyone pay. Well, the day after the single quota was introduced, the phones started: could you give us, sector x, an exemption, lower tax to sector y etc. So as long as a large part or several parts of the workforce refuse to pay taxes or have exemptions in the sense of not paying taxes, that is the situation. Giving money to teachers or anyone means taking money from someone else. It's that simple. The answer or the solution is again to return to the true, single rate, for everyone to pay their taxes," Valentin Lazea argued.

He also mentioned that the budget was cut, from the start, very optimistically, and the tasks towards tax authority ANAF were unrealistically high.

"There are at least two percent of the GDP that are lost during collection through legal exemptions for non-payment of legal taxes, plus one percent of GDP from non-payment of VAT, which has other causes. First of all, the non-connection of cash registers, computer programs that are missing at Ministry of Finance, etc. So, add these two percent of GDP plus another percent of GDP for the non-collection of VAT, and with three percent of GDP, some measures could be added here and there. But, it's an election year, and so on", said Lazea.

Asked about a possible change in the taxation system, he explained that in recent years Romania has relied on low taxation and a cheap workforce.

"We in Romania should give up this mantra with which we have been parading for 18 years, that Romania must be attractive through low taxes and cheap labor. In fact, this type of thinking has prevented us from being competitive where we should have been competitive, through education, through research expenses, through infrastructure development. We said: we will be competitive through low taxes and cheap labor. The result is the one you see," Valentin Lazea said.AGERPRES(RO - author: George Banciulea, editor: Andreea Marinescu; EN - author: Bogdan Gabaroi)