Romanian Economy minister Varujan Vosganian defended his government's plans to boost pensions on Monday after serious criticism in this regard from the International Monetary Fund and the Fitch agency. He said in a press conference today that the government could find enough funds to boost pensions without further taxation and with no risk of speeding up inflation.

The pension project approved last week involves a financial effort of over 2 billion euro for the Romanian state.

Vosganian says that the increase does not translate into a bigger inflation or over-taxing and that revenues resulting from copyrights, intellectual property and dividends will remain untaxed.

Pensions will increase with 40% up to 2008, meaning that the starting point of pensions will rise from 31% in 2007 to 37.5% in 2008.

However, the minister argues that mainly the money for pensions will come from the nominal increase of the GNP - 1.2 billon euro in 2008, from the workers, whose number will increase up to 2% in 2008, of the revenues from salaries which will bring about 180-200 million euro.