Public Debt in Romania Over the Past Two Decades: Did We Have a Coherent Debt Policy?

Public debt decisions should express a coherent debt policy, based on a strategic vision that reflects the conditions and needs for development of all interested parties. Starting from this premise, our work proposes an analysis of Romanian public debt between 1990 and 2011, aiming to highlight the strategic elements and the manner and extent to which they served to national development. The general conclusion of our study is that the strategic elements of public indebtedness had, over the period of our analysis, only a formal character, ad hoc decisions being taken under conjunctural pressures, even after 2007, when a Public Debt Management Strategy was set up. It is, therefore, necessary to connect this strategic document to the socio-economic realities, taking into account the lessons learnt from the transition and current crisis.