The bill for 10 years of meal tickets: €500 mln

Retailers transferred €100 million last year into the accounts of meal tickets issuers, according to data provided by the Ministry of Finance. In the ten years since the introduction of this system, revenues of all companies on the market totaled more than €570 mln, with profits exceeding €270 mln, according to the same source.

Over two million Romanians, or almost half the country's employees, receive meal tickets worth RON 8.5 (€2) for every working day, which means annual payments of some €2 billion.

However, even though the past ten years was marked by a visible rise in the standard of living, including the modernization of the economy, and payment systems on IT platforms, the mechanism got stuck and is functioning at very high costs, according to those who are against meal tickets, while issuers say that it is too soon for a change.

"The meal ticket system is sickening the economy (...) a debate on its functioning would be appropriate, but not before the end of this year," said Andreea Vass, Advisor to the Prime Minister. "As long as you have costs for printing some value tickets and introduce a lower value on the market, the difference between the offered ticket and that recovered seems totally irrational from an economic point of view (...) It is a completely unhealthy economic mechanism," Vass added. The first effect of eliminating meal tickets would be felt by the budget, Vass told Business Standard.

The meal ticket mechanism means that the state grants a RON 8.5 salary deductibility for each working day, the employer raises the salary at no additional costs, the employee can use these tickets to pay for foodstuffs, and stores recover their money from the ticket issuer for a fee. For hypermarket chains, this fee is one percent or less. For very small shops, the commission may exceed five percent.

Constantin Voloceai, a business owner who publicly proposed founding a state monopoly on tickets, argues that the state could benefit from money at no interest, if these tickets were issued like any other invoice or vignette.

standard.money.ro