Romania will end the year 2020 with a smaller deficit than the European Union countries and will be the country that will avoid the technical recession, said on Wednesday evening the Minister of Finance, Florin Cîţu, who specified, in the context, that he no longer “sees” a need for new issuances on international markets because the deficit has been financed.

“The European Union has an average deficit of 14% now. Hungary, in the middle of the year, has a deficit of 6%, we have 4.44%. We started this period with a huge handicap because we had a deficit inherited from last year of 4.6%. Most EU countries have had a budget surplus in recent years. There are 11 countries with a budget surplus. All EU countries have reduced their budget deficits in the last 3 years on economic growth. Only our socialists have increased the deficit and postponed due bills. When we draw the line, Romania will end 2020 with a smaller deficit than all EU countries…. We had economic growth in the first quarter, the second largest in the EU. I tell you that we will be the country that will avoid the technical recession. The recession means two consecutive quarters of economic downturn,” the finance minister told Digi24, according to Agerpres.

Florin Cîţu specified that he does not see the need for a new exit on the international markets because the deficit was financed.

“At the moment I don’t see an exit in international markets or in other markets. We are OK. We look at it every moment to see what is happening. We have managed to finance this deficit and I do not see an exit at this moment. A deficit of 8.6% to finance without the need for help from international institutions, financed only from the market, from investors that have trust. Look at FIDELIS, a bond issue for individuals, for citizens, which is listed on the Stock Exchange. What a success we had there. Every issuance we did was oversubscribed with declining interest rates. We had the only government in Romania, and even before the British, that borrowed at negative interest rates in euro,” added the head of Finances.