Parliament to consider national, social security budgets at joint plenary sitting

At joint plenary sitting today, Parliament is scheduled to consider the draft versions of the 2021 national and social security budgets, with a vote expected on Tuesday. The plenary sitting starts at 16:00hrs, EET. On Saturday, the parliamentary finance and budget committees issued a favourable report on the two bills as submitted by the government. No amendments were adopted. Under the national budget bill, government's revenues are projected to the tune of 173.700 billion lei, and outlays to the tune of 326.407 billion lei in committed appropriations and budget appropriations to the tune of 261.050 billion lei, with a deficit of 87.349 billion lei. In aggregate terms, the cash deficit is estimated at 7.16% of the Gross Domestic Product in 2021, for revenues 32.67% of GDP, or 364.907 billion lei, and outlays of 39.84 % of GDP, or 444.907 billion lei. The draft budget is built on an estimated economic growth of 4.31% in 2021. According to the draft social security budget, the revenues of the state pension system are set at 90.08 billion lei. The contributions to the insurance system for occupational accident diseases are set at 283.325 million lei, while expenses are set at 140.395 million lei, giving a surplus of 142.93 million lei. When building the social security and unemployment benefit budget the for the year 2021, the following were taken into account: a pension computation coefficient of 1,442 lei, as increased by 14% on September 1, 2020; an increase in the average gross wage in 2021 to 5,380 lei, from 5,150 lei estimated for 2020 and 4,853 lei achieved in 2019; an increase in the number of registered unemployed, expected to reach 310,000 people at the end of 2021, from 305,000 people at the end of 2020, and a rise in the reported unemployment rate to 3.6% at the end of 2021 as against 3.5% at the end of 2020, according to a substantiation note of the bill. AGERPRES (RO - author: Dana Piciu, editor: Claudia Stanescu; EN - author: Corneliu-Aurelian Colceriu, editor: Adina Panaitescu)