The “Competitive Romania” Program, the strategy which aims to ensure the rapid convergence of Romania with the countries of Western Europe, has a cumulative budget in the first five years of implementation of 10.5% of GDP, respectively 17 billion euros, says the chief-economist of the National Bank of Romania (BNR) Valentin Lazea, quoted by Agerpres.

The BNR chief-economist also said that the strategy, on which experts from the government, the National Bank of Romania and the Romanian Academy, work upon for about a year now, will be made available to the public and for the political parties by the end of October.

Within the program there have been identified 16 areas that can contribute to the increase of GDP. From these there have been identified 41 strategic objectives divided into 90 measures.

“Competitive Romania” Program (…) is a strategy that aims to meet the major challenges of Romania after joining the EU and NATO. The main challenge is the swift convergence with the countries of Western Europe. To get from 57% of the EU average, GDP / capita, at 75% in the next 10 years, Romania should grow sustainable, with about 5% in each of the next 10 years. The bad news is that this pattern cannot be achieved solely with monetary and fiscal policies, but only through structural reforms. What is the potential GDP or potential growth? It is the growth rate that does not cause imbalances in the economy. Now, in Romania, the potential GDP is 3%, not 4%, not 5%, not 5,2%!” said Lazea.

According to him, the new program does not represent a new strategy, in addition to the 365 strategies within various institutions in Romania and in various stages of preparation or implementation which, however, have no budget and no prioritization.

“Within the program there have been identified 16 areas that can contribute to the increase of GDP. From these there have been identified 41 strategic objectives divided into 90 measures. These were prioritized and budgeted: the cumulative budget for the next five years is 10,5% of GDP or 17 billion euros, of which two thirds are already found in the ministerial budgets,” added the BNR representative.

Lazea added that the measures contained in the strategy make sense also from the political point of view, not just economically, because they have short-term effects and, so they should be included on the list of any party, either left or right side.