July 21 (SeeNews) - Romania will meet the European Union's budget deficit target of 3% of GDP in 2017, the finance ministry said on Friday in response to an Eurostat document showing the country had a budget gap of 3.2% in the first quarter.
"Eurostat's 3.2% of GDP value is calculated on the seasonally adjusted ESA (European System of Accounts) standard, reflecting the trend of the budget deficit recorded in previous quarters in 2016 and based on GDP in the first quarter, the time in which GDP usually has the lowest nominal value for the year," the finance ministry said in a press release.
Romania's GDP totalled 146.4 billion lei ($37 billion/ 33 billion euro) in the first quarter of 2016, while in the fourth quarter, GDP was 228.9 billion lei - the highest value for the year, the ministry said.
On Thursday, the European Office of Statistics (Eurostat) said that Romania posted the highest rate of quarterly growth of government deficit in the first quarter of the year among EU member states, of 1.4 percentage points. Romania's budget deficit widened from 1.8% in the last quarter of 2016 to 3.2% in the first three months of 2017.
The government deficit of Romania in the first quarter of this year was three times higher than the EU average of 1.1 % of GDP. Among the EU member states, only France had a higher deficit than Romania, of 3.3% of GDP.
The ministry also said that Romania posted a 3.1% deficit in the first quarter of 2016 and the increase to 3.2% in the first quarter of 2017 is only marginal, which suggests that the country is on the track to meet the budget deficit target for the year.
The new chief of Romania's fiscal authority ANAF, Mirela Calugareanu, vowed on Wednesday to make all necessary efforts to help keep the country's budget deficit below 3%.
"Together with the finance ministry we will take all the necessary steps to meet our deficit target of 3%. We will also pay more attention to the tax agency-taxpayer relationship in order to stimulate voluntary compliance and to increase their confidence in the tax institution," Calugareanu said in a statement on her first day at the helm of ANAF.
Romania targets a consolidated budget gap equivalent to 2.99% of GDP on a cash basis in 2017, just below the EU's 3% ceiling. Romania's consolidated budget deficit widened to 0.27% of the projected 2017 GDP in the first five months of the year, up from 0.10% of GDP a year earlier.
In May, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned that Romania's budget deficit is expected to widen to 3.7% of GDP this year and to 3.9% of GDP in 2018 in the absence of additional fiscal measures.
(1 euro=4.5654 lei)