On November 23, the government of Romania disbursed RON 13.6 billion (EUR 2.7 billion) from the Budgetary Reserve Fund for education, social assistance rights and pensions, the minister of finance, Marcel Boloş, announced, Europa Libera Romania reported.

Of this, RON 3.7 billion was earmarked to partially cover medicine bills due December (RON 3.5 billion) and public hospital expenses (RON 0.2 billion).

To supplement the social security budget, RON 657 million was disbursed from the Reserve Fund to be used for paying pensions.

Finance minister Marcel Boloş said that this mechanism will be used until the end of the year for the proper control of spending funds from the state budget.

According to the law, money from the government's Reserve Fund can be used for "urgent or unforeseen expenses". These are, according to the law, "those expenses generated by special situations newly appearing during the budget exercise, which require immediate financing and for which the existing funds in the budgets of the main credit authorities are insufficient".

Reports by Expert Forum think tank found that electoral periods in Romania bring increases in expenses from the Reserve Fund. Its analysts believe the Reserve Fund "remains a clientelistic, vaguely regulated, non-transparent and uncontrolled instrument. Allocations are made by the government and are not subject to proper control."

iulian@romania-insider.com

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