Romanian Public Debt in Interwar Period and Between 1948-1989

Abstract

In analyzing the public debt problem, there is an analytic presentation and also a historic presentation. The present project is a combination between the two modalities, emphasizing the institutional side, where the historic presentation is made by underlining the changing moments in history. The unitary characteristic of the public debt should be taken into account; also, there is the option between analyzing the public debt in the larger sense and in the unitary sense. In the larger sense, the public debt includes also the indebt of the country’s financial institutions and the local authorities. We will analyze, out of the larger public debt problematic, the ones regarding the loans contracted and managed by the Ministry of Finance, which are considered to be part of the public debt. For understanding the legislative environment of constituting and managing Romania’s public debt, some notes are necessary to be made. First, even the expression of legislative environment has to be understood starting from the premises that for the entire analyzed period, Romania had democratic institutions, which acted and manifested according to the modern world’s accepted rules. A problem involved by the analysis of the content regards the up to date theme, a discussion about the public debt in Romania. Initially we started from the idea that the thematic is up to date through the clarifications that can be brought by our own past experience to serve the present. There are also other arguments: we noticed the necessity of accuracy, the terminology precision, there being lots of gaps in understanding the public debt mechanism. The minimum explanation of public debt domain is necessary, being known that the terminology used has changed its meanings in time, and this era’s approach of the terminology gives us the opportunity to understand the public debt phenomenon in that period of time. Present governing works would be more efficient, more precise and more accurate if past experience would be considered.