Romania’s Liberal prime minister Ludovic Orban has argued in favor of phasing out the supplementary excise duty on car fuels, which was introduced in the autumn of 2017 by the former Social Democrat Government led by Mihai Tudose, Profit.ro reported.

Orban’s National Liberal Party (PNL) already initiated a bill aimed at cutting the excise duties on fuels, this summer, at a time when the party was not expecting to come to power.

One of the initiators was the new finance minister, Florin Citu. Orban said that although the supplementary excise duty “seems to generate revenues,” eliminating it could constitute a strong stimulus for the local economy.

The supplementary excise was introduced in two steps of RON 0.16 per liter each in 2017 and resulted in the end-user fuel prices rising by an overall RON 1 per liter to more than RON 5 per liter at that time.

PM Tudose claimed at that time that the end-user price had not decreased when the excise duty was lifted earlier in January 2017.

As regards the reduction in the base excise duty, the bill inked by PNL and already passed by the Senate, provides a 17% cut for diesel and 16% for petroleum.

An estimate for the impact on the budget revenues was not attached to the bill.

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editor@romania-insider.com