* (Interview with Mr. Sebastian Vlădescu, the Minister of Public Finance)
* "Our goal is not to bring pensions and salaries in the public sector back to their current levels, but rather to restructure public spending by setting new compensation levels and to balance the pension system"
* "Private management of state owned companies?" Privatization would be better!"
Reporter: Minister, reducing spending in companies that are losing money is reasonable, but not enough. What are the steps towards covering the rest of the budget deficit, which would allow us to return to the current wage levels later down the road, perhaps even increase them?
Sebastian Vlădescu: We don"t intend to return to the current system. The current wage levels are the system itself. We are currently working on a new law of unified wages, which will require new compensation steps, new classifications of public sector employees, the narrowing of the spread between the lowest and the highest wages in the public sector, and I hope this law will come into effect next year. This new law will include the levels of wage expenses in the public sector in the year 2011.
According to the agreement with the IMF, the amount allocated for wages in the public sector will be 39 billion lei, for a set number of employees. After that, the law of fiscal responsibility contains clear details on how much public spending will increase from one year to the next, and I hope that the other governments that will come down the road will abide by that law. Concerning pensions, next year we will have a new law of pensions, which says that after a certain period of time, the system will become balanced, according to our estimates.
Reporter: You mean public sector workers will no longer earn what they used to? I mean, will their wages and pensions go down and they should not expect any more ra
