ANAF reorganized "by the World Bank"

Finance Minister Bogdan Dragoi, announced that the National Agency for Fiscal Administration (NAFA), will be restructured with the help of World Bank.

The reorganization will be made after an assessment of ANAF’s activity and it will be part of a precautionary loan agreement of 1 billion Euros that Romania intends to conclude with World Bank.

According to Finance Minister Bogdan Dragoi, reorganization should aim to improve the level collection of revenues to the state budget.

Romania has one of the lowest levels of collection.

Average income to the state budget in European countries is 40-45 per cent of GDP while in Romania the collection level is below 32% of GDP.

"Fundamental issue is the tax evasion and fiscal fraud, because there are two components, they speak more than evasion, about tax fraud is not spoken about , and a second issue , non-taxation of very important areas of economy such as agriculture.

"If taxation was introduced in agriculture, then we could overcome this level of 31-32% of GDP income and we could probably go up quickly to 35-36-37%," said economic commentator, Ionel Blănculescu.

ANAF reorganization, said Finance Minister Bogdan Dragoi will cover both the institution structure and IT systems in order to be reduced bureaucracy and tasks overlaps.

According to a conservative estimate of Tax Council , the tax evasionin Romania is about 10 per cent of GDP.

"If Tax Council considers 10 percent evasion level , around 13 billion Euros, from my analysis, the underground economy, we reached a level of about 14 billion Euros, so it is exceeded this level given by the council, so somewhere around, I can say, 14 billion Euros would be tax evasion and fiscal fraud, "said Ionel Blănculescu.

A few days after being appointed head of government, Prime Minister Ungureanu asked ANAF within two months to bring additionally to the budget 1.5 per cent of GDP, about 2 billions Euros by more effective controls in combating tax evasion.

The 60 days period that the prime minister set expires early next week.



Translated by
Denisse-Meda Bucura
MTTLC, Bucharest University