Lucian Croitoru, NBR: Corruption risk is high at the top

While everyone is complaining about wages, everyone admits that the salaries of the president, of the prime-minister and of other ministers are extremely low compared to their positions, says Lucian Croitoru, advisor to the governor of the Central Bank. "Because of this, you can"t have good ministers in the government, because you can"t afford to pay them as much as they would deserve. And the agenda of the rich ministers is usually opposed to reform", said Lucian Croitoru, adding that the maintains his theory that there is corruption at the top.

In his opinion, for Romania to grow, public investments should increase. Lucian Croitoru said that, even in the times of economic boom, the Romanian economy was growing on the back of inflows of foreign capital. He said that even though there is demand for improvement from several structures, there isn"t much that the government can do, except maintain an adequate environment that would encourage foreign investments.

Another issue discussed by Lucian Croitoru is the public sector and the fact that many people have retired at 40. "At least 300,000 pensioners have fraudulently retired on medical grounds", said Mr. Croitoru. Furthermore, 500,000 employees in the public sector are underemployed, they are "extraneous". Another issue discussed by Mr. Croitoru was the lack of true reform in healthcare and education.

• Tax exemptions are an invisible cost

Concerning taxation, tax exemptions represent an invisible cost which increases the effective taxation levels, Lucian Croitoru said yesterday in a conference. In his opinion, due to the large number of tax exemptions, Romania is far from what it should be. "Tax exemptions are at their highest levels in the agricultural sector and in the taxation of wages", said Lucian Croitoru.