Reduction of fuel excise duty is no longer on the agenda of the governing coalition Florin Cîțu announces

PNL President Florin Cîțu said on Tuesday that reducing fuel excise duty is no longer on the agenda of the governing coalition.

„This measure – reducing excise duty – is not on the table. (…) This measure has not been proposed, this measure is no longer on the table in the coalition,” Cîțu said in Parliament.

He was asked if he agreed with the measure being floated by the PSD to grant a fuel subsidy to freight carriers.

„Every time such a measure comes up we have to look at the context, to say if we go in this area with a subsidy why not go in other areas with subsidies because the price of fuel affects all Romanians and then let’s help all the Romanians who go to work from morning to evening and maybe they can’t afford to take their car. (…) I say I agree (with subsidies) for the whole economy. There are no measures for a specific sector. Just think that what we did for the construction sector a few years ago created problems on the labor market, it is a sector that has developed, it is true, but we don’t know what the costs are for society”, explained the PNL leader.

Cîțu stressed that the allocation for investment must be increased so that the economy can recover quickly.

„The National Liberal Party’s proposals are very clear – 7% on investment should have been there from the beginning, it was not there, it must be there. Without investment, you can’t have a quick recovery of the economy. We must increase the income of all Romanians. There is only one option here and I am still trying to convince my colleagues that any other option that I hear and no one has the courage to assume in the coalition (…) that we want to increase wages only in a certain public sector or to do I don’t know what other scheme…it doesn’t work. (…) You can’t increase wages only in a certain sector, because we won’t support that,” he said.

Another NLP proposal is to reduce the budget deficit through improved tax collection, but also through better expenditure management. „This is the signal you give to the markets and so you don’t raise interest rates, you don’t raise inflation. These are measures… and you don’t have to invent hot water. We did them, we solved them, we showed when nobody thought the economy could recover in V shape, remember, we can do it now”, Florin Cîțu said.