Finance minister: I will quit if the 10% CAS reduction will pass

Romanian Finance minister Sebastian Vladescu declared on Thursday morning that he will resign if the Parliament will approve the 10% cut in social insurance contributions for employees and employers. He claims that „you can’t be a Finance minister if the ministers’ budgets are unbalanced by laws that disregard the economic reality”.

Work commissions MPs voted on Wednesday in favour of the reduction of the employees and employers’ social insurance contributions. It regards an amendment that sets the contributions’ standard at 21.8% for normal working conditions: 9% are due to be paid by the employee and 12.8% by the employers.

The MPs vote follows the state budget project, which entailed that the contributions were kept at their 2009 level. According to the budget draft, the standard for the social insurance contributions should have been 31.3%, just like last year, out of which 10.5% was paid by the employees and 20.8% by the employers, while the contribution for special working conditions should have been limited to 36.3%, 10.5% paid by employees and 25.8% paid by the employers.

Currently, the total contributions paid by employees and employers amount to 40.05% of the gross income, although it should have dropped in the first day of January 2009 by 2%, from 39.5% to 37.5% of the gross salary.