The 2 percent tax charged on the banks’ turnover over a two-year period will bring 350 million RON to the budget, while the 0.5 percent additional tax on oil and natural gas companies will funnel another 600 million RON into the state coffers, Finance Minister Marcel Bolos said on Wednesday.

“Royalties are part of the second implementation stage, because, as you well know, these measures will continue so that we have a healthy fiscal-budgetary consolidation process,” Bolos said.

“I specified that we have three fundamental elements related to royalties. There are the mineral resources, the oil, and the natural gas part. These are the royalties we are trying to readjust, and it is totally unfair that, for instance, 36 categories of mineral resources bring us just 336 million RON per year, as it is also completely unfair to collect just 2.5 million RON off 300,000 hectares of land owned by the Romanian state. The ailment is visible in this permanent need for pensions, for the wages of teachers, doctors, money we are able to find even now, but for sure we need to properly capitalize on these state-owned assets,” added the minister.