The state should finally cut salary spending like the private sector did when it fired people and cut salaries as early as last year, says businessman Dan Sucu, owner of the furniture group Mobexpert, but Finance Minister Sebastian Vladescu is still looking for solutions for personnel cutbacks in the public sector without risking social and political instability.

"Things are different in the public sector, however, because if 40,000 people were to leave in one day, that would create a shock. Likewise, were we to decide to cut salaries by 20%, that would pose a great risk to social and political stability. Solutions have to be found where salary spending could be cut in such a way as to minimise the social disturbance risk," says Vladescu, without providing details about such solutions.

Sebastian Vladescu and Dan Sucu yesterday attended a special ZF Expert type meeting where readers who are experts in their fields discuss the stories to be included in the newspaper.

"The state sector has to adjust to today's reality, as the private sector has already done. What scares me is that I see many people in the state sector who are quite intelligent whose results are quite modest when it comes to this adjustment," said the business sector representative.

In reply, Vladescu invited him to come and see "how big the difference between will and reality" was in the public administration, as the "social acceptance" of such harsh steps came into play here. Sucu answered that such a position suggested public sector employees were more important than those in the private sector, where hundreds of people lost their jobs without any threat to the social stability. "Wasn't restructuring painful for our people, too?"

The state should finally cut salary spending like the private sector did when it fired people and cut salaries as early as last year, says