All newspapers today read about the new ministers to form the government and the governance program put forward by the PSD PDL alliance. Elsewhere in the news, Romanians will face price increases in early 2009.
Cotidianul reads that Democrat Liberals changed the governance program to include more right wing policies: some social measures imposed by Social Democrats were deleted, massive spending decreases.
The governance program became lighter after a series of fiscal provisions were removed from the original texts, among which the differentiated VAT tax and the allocation of revenue taxes per counties.
The new text was released at the Social Democratic Party meeting as the new governance program. In general terms, the government plans to continue with a relaxed fiscal policy, to cut social spending and those money waisted in state salaries.
The 2009 budgetary deficit was lowered at 1.7% of the GDP up to 2.5% in the original text if economic perspectives will be maintained to 3.5% with an inflation of 5%. In the new program, the government will not sustain pensions of 45%.
The new program aims to cut fiscal deficits by reducing public spending. More precisely, the government wants to adopt a gradual decrease of spending initially meant for state employees by 20%.
The decrease will be obtained by the elimination of the open jobs in the central administration (some 139,500 jobs) and by reducing benefits offered. Some of the public servants might also get fired, because, according to the program, a rationalization of personnel numbes is seeked.
However, several measures were taken out for good from the governance program, like social protection measures or the establishment of a minimum average salary for the whole country, of 600 Romanian Ron starting July 1, 2009. Another measure taken
