Parliament passes 2011 Budget Law

Parliament on Thursday, March 31, adopted the 2011 Budget Law in the final reading with the votes of the majority coalition; the Communist faction voted against, Info-Prim Neo reports. The Communist deputies criticized the bill as antisocial and anti-constitutional, complaining that all the amendments proposed by them had been ignored. They also claimed that the budget distribution was made in a biased manner as most money went to the district and local authorities that were loyal to the current government. Asked by Info-Prim Neo to comment on the budget distribution, Liberal-Democrat Veaceslav Ionita, the head of the parliamentary commission responsible for budget matters, said that the current budget was in fact a first step towards compensating for the handicap inherited from the Communist government. Ionita claimed that it was the Communist government that actually distributed the money on political criteria, so the current budget was oriented towards the localities that needed assistance the most. The Budget Law provides for revenues of 19 billion lei and spending of 20.03 billion lei. The deficit of 1.26 billion lei represents 1.9% of the GDP. The GDP is estimated at 82 billion lei, an increment of 8.2 billion lei from last year.