The year 2026 is in a very good financing context for reducing costs by overlapping loans from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) and SAFE (European program SAFE - Security Action For Europe - n.r.) of up to six billion euro, said on Thursday the Director General of the State Treasury, Stefan Nanu, at a specialized debate.
„This year we have a very good financing context, which puts us in a favorable position to achieve our cost reduction objective. We have an overlap of loans from the NRRP with loans from SAFE, which can mean a package of up to six billion euro from the two facilities, loans on extremely good terms that we can take out”said Nanu, quoted by Agerpres.
According to him, in 2026, the government is also focusing on investments and procurement projects from low-cost financing sources such as SAFE.
„The Government's focus in the budget process is to accommodate investment projects and procurement projects, such as SAFE, which have very cheap sources of funding. They are also multi-year in the case of SAFE, as was the case with the PNRR. The primary focus is on PNRR, because it is the last year in which we can still benefit from these funds”explained the Treasury chief.
He added that cheaper borrowing will reduce the issuance of government bonds on financial markets.
„Having more off-market, very cheap, off-market borrowing basically reduces our supply of securities in the financial markets. Once reduced it also has clear price and interest rate benefits”said Stefan Nanu.
He believes that European funds are extremely important for our country, first of all because investment projects can be realized without impacting the deficit.
„European funds are extremely important, on the one hand from the perspective of grant absorption. It is clear that you can accommodate some investment projects with no impact on the deficit, as the funds are budget neutral. As long as you use grants for investment projects, they mean an amount on expenditure and an amount on revenue, so they are budget neutral. The lohn part does not mean the same thing. It means deficit creation. The lohn that you take from the PNRR or SAFE covers a deficit created by an expenditure, but it has other benefits. Those loans are the cheapest Romania could access from somewhere. They are money at the European Union's financing costs at very long maturities, up to 40 years and at low interest rates of 2.5 percentage points. So, it is a huge benefit in terms of minimizing long-term costs”explained the Treasury chief.