STREAMLINING THE BUDGET PROCESS BY PRIORITIZING PUBLIC INVESTMENT PROJECTS

The substantiation of the state budget for 2014 has also considered some measures to improve budget planning activities by prioritizing public investment projects. The prioritizing approach of public investment projects in the budget process is a particularly important and complex one, involving a set of coherent and responsible evaluation, selection and prioritization activities of such projects based on a well defined prioritizing criteria and mechanism. It was started in 2012, unfortunately not as an undertaking of public decision makers in Romania, but as a requirement of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in order to improve the budget process. The reason is the fact that not considering public investment projects a priority produced negative effects on the budget process, on the whole Romanian economy after the events of 1989, characterized as a lack of vision in terms of the public investment approach. Unfortunately, these negative effects persisted after Romania joined the European Union and has resulted in the low level of access to funds.