"In 2013, Romania will have the biggest GDP in history (the GDP of 2008 will be exceeded)".

"The markets have faith in the government's economic policy: we are borrowing at the lowest interest rates in history".

"The minimum wage is at a historic high".

"Public investments are at the highest level in history compared to the deficit".

"The average pension will reach 200 Euros for the first time".

"The lowest deficit since we joined the EU".

"Romania has the lowest tax burdens in the EU (and implicitly, the lowest revenues in the EU)".

These are some of the promises made in Romania's budget for 2014 which suggest that prime-minister Victor Ponta wants to make history with "The Citizen's budget - a budget based on investments".

In the statements made after yesterday's government meeting, in which the draft budget for next year was approved, the head of the Executive was presenting a glorious economy, which is rising loftily above its clinically dead European peers.

The only question echoing from every direction is "Who's going to believe him?"

All of his statements that announce the vertiginous growth of the industry, of the degree of absorption of the EU funds, of salaries and pensions, of public investments etc, are being disproved effortlessly by businesspeople, who are faced with an unprecedented fiscal burden (the lowest in the EU and in the US, according to Ponta) and with an unpredictable legislative environment.

Victor Ponta yesterday announced that this year Romania will have a bigger GDP than in 2008, after the National Statistics Institute announced an economic growth rate of 2.7%, in the first nine months of 2013.

"We have finally reached the point we were at in 2008. In 2014 we will have the biggest GDP since the revolution", the prime-minister said.

According to the budget