Romania’s Government in its March 29 meeting endorsed the amendments to the emergency ordinance (OUG) 114/2018, also known as the “greed tax”, in a form very close to the one disclosed earlier during the week.

Among the notable last-minute revisions, the price of natural gas produced domestically is capped only for residential users, and not for the industrial users, Economica.net reported. This is important because residential consumption accounts for a small part of the total consumption.

Another detail, related to the “greed tax” levied on banks is that the tax can be waived under slightly looser conditions. On the downside, the banks are required to re-finance the retail loans within 60 days, upon request, under the new lending terms, namely at interest rates pegged to the new benchmark that is the average interest rate of the actual deals on the money market (as opposed to the ROBOR benchmark resulted from the quotations showed by the main banks).

The fate of the 2nd Pillar of the pension system remains in limbo as the Government deferred the capitalization requirements and keeps negotiating with the fund managers for directing part of the money in their portfolio to public-private projects.

editor@romania-insider.com

(Photo source: Gov.ro)