The bureaucrats' salaries have become almost double compared with the average salary of the country over the last two or three years and are threatening not only the public finances but also the labour market, with the aggressive competition of the state against private companies, the regional representatives of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) believe.

"After having almost doubled in 2004, the salaries of the people in the public administration were approximately double the average salary at the end of 2006. As a comparison, the salaries in Germany in the public sector are close to the average and in the Czech Republic they are 10% below the country's average salary," write Costas Christou and Juan Fernandez-Ansola, the representatives of the IMF in the region, in an article send to ZF.

The Romanian state has become a market maker on the labour market, as it has spectacularly raised the wages of the bureaucrats and has been one of the biggest employers in the economy over the last few years, the two IMF officials conclude.

"The significant increase in the public sector wages has put pressure on the salaries in the private sector, and statistical analysis shows that the salary raises in the public sector have affected the private sector in the last five or six years. Moreover, if we look at the workforce employment, we can see that the number of employees has increased in the public sector to the detriment of the private sector," the two officials say.

The salary policy in the public sector is the cause for some anomalies in the salary structure, the Fund representatives note. The increase in the public servant salaries is even more unjustified, the two believe, as it is "hard to say that the efficiency of the public sector in Romania has significantly improved over the last few years."

The average salary in the public administratio