Romania\u2019s general government budget deficit contracted by 4.2% y\/y to RON 146 billion (EUR 28 billion) in 2025, according to preliminary data published by the Ministry of Finance. The deficit-to-GDP ratio contracted by 1 percentage point (pp) from 8.67% in 2024 to 7.65% in 2025, mainly driven by expenditure held under control by the executive under the package of budgetary measures legislated in December 2024.<\/p>\n
The packages legislated in July 2025 and later during last year should drive the deficit, other things equal, close to 6.0% of GDP in 2026, according to rough consensus estimates.<\/p>\n
The deficit thus came in below the 8.4% of GDP target envisaged under the revised planning (September 2025), but it was slightly above the 7.1% of GDP initial plan (December 2024). The figure was close to the 7.5% of GDP agreed with the European Commission in July 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For 2026, the government of prime minister Ilie Bolojan tentatively sketched a 6.2%-of-GDP gap, broadly seen as feasible. It would be slightly (0.2pp) smaller than the 6.4%-of-GDP target in the 7-year fiscal consolidation trajectory sketched under the excessive deficit procedure (EDP).<\/p>\n
Out of the total deficit in 2025, RON 14.4 billion (0.75% of GDP) was prompted by operations with funds from the EU budget (expenditures for the projects financed under EU grants larger than transfers) \u2013 close to the RON 14 billion (0.9% of GDP) negative balance with EU funds in 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Filtering out this one-off element, the \u201cclean\u201d deficit was only 6.9% of GDP in 2025, down from 7.8% of GDP in 2024 but well above 4.9% in 2023. This figure stands for the operations from the national budget (including neither the transfers from the EU budget, nor the expenditures, mostly investments related to projects funded from EU schemes).<\/p>\n
The interest on public debt surged by 39% y\/y to RON 50 billion, or 2.6% of GDP in 2025 (2.1% of GDP in 2024).\u00a0<\/p>\n
Filtering this element out of the \u201cclean deficit,\u201d this would result in a \u201cprimary clean deficit\u201d of only 4.25% of GDP in 2025 \u2013 down from 5.75% of GDP in 2024 (but still above the 3.1% of GDP in 2023). This figure stands for the operations of the national budget, not including the interest paid on public debt.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The total revenues to Romania\u2019s public budget rose by 15.3% y\/y (+23.4% y\/y in Q4) to RON 663 billion (34.7% of GDP) in 2025. The revenues-to-GDP ratio rose from 33.7% in 2024 and 33.4% in 2023. However, this was due to 79% y\/y stronger transfers from the EU budget (RON76 billion) while the domestic revenues to the national budget rose by only 10.3% y\/y (+17.4% y\/y in Q4) to RON 587 billion (30.7% of GDP, still above the 30.3% in 2024).<\/p>\n
Notably, the net VAT revenues increased by only 10.7% y\/y in 2025 (+18.9% y\/y in Q4) despite the 7.1% y\/y average inflation rate, but were dragged down by the retail sales volume edging up by under 1% y\/y in the year. This modest advance of VAT collection (which improved in Q4) was despite the 2pp VAT rate hike in August.<\/p>\n
For comparison, VAT revenues surged by 15.9% y\/y in 2024 without any VAT rate hike and on moderate 5.5% y\/y inflation (but driven by robust +8.6% y\/y rise in retail sales volume).\u00a0<\/p>\n
Romania\u2019s total public expenditures rose by 11.2% y\/y in 2025\u00a0<\/strong>(+11.4% y\/y in Q4) to RON 809 billion: 43.4% of GDP, up from 41.3% of GDP in 2024. Filtering out the expenditures related to projects financed from EU grants, the expenditures rose by only 7.3% y\/y to RON 718 billion, or 37.6% of GDP, down from 38.1% in 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n The main source of savings was the payroll, which increased by only 1.2% y.y in 2025 (-9.0% y\/y in Q4) to RON 168 billion or 8.8% of GDP, down from 9.4% of GDP in 2024 but still up from 8.3% of GDP in 2023.<\/p>\n iulian@romania-insider.com<\/em><\/p>\n (Photo source:\u00a0Vlad Ispas<\/a>\/Dreamstime.com<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Romania\u2019s general government budget deficit contracted by 4.2% y\/y to RON 146 billion (EUR 28 billion) in 2025, according to preliminary data published by the Ministry of Finance. The deficit-to-GDP ratio contracted by 1 percentage point (pp) from 8.67% in 2024 to 7.65% in 2025, mainly driven by expenditure held under control by the executive […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8615\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}