Romania’s National Bank Governor Mugur Isarescu makes EUR 13,600 a month. He revealed this information himself on Thursday, August 3, a few days after local financial newspaper Ziarul Financiar wrote that Isarescu kept his salary secret.

Isarescu had last revealed his salary in a wealth statement in 2005. Back then, he made EUR 6,200 per month.

Ziarul Financiar pointed out that the European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi had his salary public in the institution’s annual report. Draghi had a gross salary of EUR 32,155 per month last year.

“I present you the net salary and management allowance for the Governor position: the net salary is RON 42,727 and the monthly allowance for the President of the Board position is RON 18,476. Thus, the total net monthly income is RON 61,203 (EUR 13,601 at an exchange rate of RON 4.5 per EUR),” Isarescu said on Friday, according to Agerpres.

Isarescu, who turned 67 on August 1, also said he hasn’t filed for pension, although he could have done so starting July 2014. He considered it “a nice and normal gesture” not to get a pension while he was still in office and had a salary from the central bank.

Mugur Isarescu has been in office since 1990, with a one-year hiatus in 1999-2000 when he was Prime Minister, and his current mandate, which started in 2014, ends in 2019. His salary has always been a theme for speculation in Romania.

Isarescu also announced that the BNR board has decided to make the minutes of its monetary policy meetings public. The salaries of the BNR board members will also be public, BNR announced.

The central bank motivated this decision by the fact that most central banks in the EU have increased their transparency related to monetary policy decisions and management salaries.

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editor@romania-insider.com