Save the Children Romania launched on November 10 a research called The public budget allocated to children, in which it tried to find out how much money the Romanian state spends for children. The study, which focuses on three types of expenditures that the state allocates for education, health, and social assistance, has found that there is insufficient data to draw conclusions and the authors have asked the state for more transparency in this area.

The research also shows that the insufficient resources allocated to these three areas make children from disadvantaged areas extremely vulnerable, according to Save the Children Romania. Moreover, the funding formula leaves these budgets at the discretion of local authorities or their financial ability, which don't always reflect the communities' needs. All institutions dealing with children's rights and education funding depend on the resources allocated at the central level.

“At this time, the application of the education, health, and social assistance laws is rather dependent on public finances. The allocations for these areas suffer significant fluctuations from year to year,” said Gabriela Alexandrescu, executive manager Save the Children Romania.

In the last six years, the education spending, expressed as a percentage of the general consolidated budget, has suffered many variations, which shows that the state’s investment in education is unpredictable, according to the study. In 2008, the state’s spending in this area amounted to 11.5% of the general consolidated budget, while in 2014 the state’s spending was 9.14%. 2013 brought the lowest level of spending for education, of just 8.06% of the general consolidated budget.

At a local level, detailed budget execution data for each category of education beneficiaries is not available, according to Save the Children. The data analyzed by the organization show that in 2008 Bucharest allotted the largest amount of money for education – RON 5,262 per year per beneficiary - while Constanta was at the other end of the ranking, with just RON 2,914 per year per beneficiary.

In 2014, the average expenses increased, given the decentralization and the effects of winning salary rights in court. Bucharest continued to have the highest average spending for education (RON 5,667 per year per beneficiary), but Cluj and Harghita counties also passed the threshold of RON 5,000. However, counties such as Vaslui, Prahova, Mures, Giurgiu, Constanta, and Bacau kept the costs below RON 4,000.

“Current data on budget spending for children’s education, health and social protection in Romania are insufficiently detailed and we can only make quite general estimations. Of the three analyzed areas, the health sector has the fewest data available about the children,” said Mihaela Manole, Save the Children coordinator.

The specialists who conducted the research also made some recommendations for a more detailed analyze. They include a higher transparency of public budgets, the establishment of an inter-institutional cooperation on the budgets for children, and an improved budget analysis methodology.

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com