In brief
- The National Bank’s printing works, the plant that prints Romania’s banknotes, has an approved budget for 2026: 160.9 million lei in revenue, 144.1 million in expenditure and 13.7 million in net profit.
- Out of that profit, the state collects 7.32 million lei in payments to the budget, while the staff receive 900,000 lei as profit sharing.
- The undertaking has 127 employees, with average monthly earnings of 14,184 lei, and planned investment of 13.5 million lei.
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) no. 702 of 25 August 2026
In force from: 25 August 2026
The most discreet autonomous public undertaking in Romania, the one that prints the money, receives its 2026 budget only at the end of August: 160.9 million lei in revenue and a net profit of 13.7 million, almost half of which goes to the state budget. Government Decision no. 661/2026, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 702 of 25 August 2026, approves the revenue and expenditure budget of the autonomous public undertaking „Imprimeria Băncii Naționale a României”. The act joins the series of budgets of state-owned undertakings and companies approved this summer, after that of the Romanian Lottery.
The legal basis is Government Ordinance no. 26/2013 on strengthening financial discipline at state-owned economic operators, approved by Law no. 47/2014. It requires the budgets of such entities to be approved by government decision.
The decision is countersigned by the Minister of Finance, by the Governor of the National Bank and by the Minister of Labour, a sign of the triple supervision exercised over the staff costs of an undertaking with 127 employees.
What it changes in practice
The first effect is that it sets the revenue. The budget provides for total revenue of 160,917 thousand lei, of which 157,917 thousand from operations and 3,000 thousand in financial revenue. The undertaking receives neither subsidies nor transfers from the budget.
The second effect concerns expenditure. The total comes to 144,102 thousand lei, of which 141,102 thousand is operating expenditure and 3,000 thousand financial expenditure.
The third effect is the structure of the operating expenditure: 82,921 thousand for goods and services, 520 thousand for taxes, duties and similar payments, 24,477 thousand for staff and 33,184 thousand for other operating expenses.
The fourth effect has to do with pay. Wage-related expenditure amounts to 22,626 thousand lei, of which 20,194 thousand in wages and 2,432 thousand in bonuses. The mandate contract and the other management and control bodies cost 1,101 thousand, and employer contributions 750 thousand.
The fifth effect is the result. The difference between revenue and expenditure gives a gross result of 16,815 thousand lei, from which current profit tax of 3,076 thousand is deducted, leaving a net profit of 13,739 thousand.
The sixth effect is the way the profit is shared out. The budget provides for 900 thousand for employee profit sharing, within the legal ceiling of 10% of net profit, and 7,320 thousand in payments to the state budget. The remainder, 6,419 thousand, goes to other reserves, as an own source of financing.
The seventh effect concerns investment. The sources of investment financing come to 59,928 thousand lei, but the investment expenditure planned for 2026 is only 13,485 thousand. Budget allocations are zero.
The eighth effect has to do with staff. The undertaking forecasts 127 employees at the end of the year, with an average headcount also of 127, and average monthly earnings per employee of 14,184 lei.
The ninth effect is the efficiency indicator. The budget provides for total expenditure of 896 lei for every 1,000 lei of total revenue, labour productivity in value terms of 1,243 thousand lei per employee, and zero overdue payments and overdue receivables. What the printing works produces shows up in the Official Gazette of Romania a few weeks later: in September 2026 the National Bank issued a 100 lei Eugeniu Carada note for collectors, sold at 240 lei.
What has changed compared with the previous situation
The first point concerns the calendar. The budget for 2026 is approved on 25 August 2026, that is, after more than half the financial year has already gone by.
The second point has to do with financial independence. The undertaking has no subsidies, no transfers and no budget allocations for investment, so it finances itself entirely out of its own activity.
The third point concerns the ratio between sources and investment. The sources of investment financing, 59,928 thousand lei, are more than four times larger than the planned investment expenditure of 13,485 thousand, which means a stock of resources left uncommitted in 2026.
The fourth point is about European funds. The budget provides for zero revenue and zero eligible expenditure from European funds, so the activity does not depend on outside financing.
One arithmetical check, flagged here because it can be made from the published figures: the three destinations of the profit add up to 14,639 thousand lei, 900 thousand more than the net profit of 13,739 thousand. The figure on row 38, namely 6,419 thousand, corresponds to the net profit minus the payments to the state budget, 13,739 minus 7,320, without also deducting the employee profit sharing on row 33. The heading of row 38 states, however, that both destinations are deducted. The rest of the budget’s control totals check out without discrepancies.
What does not change is the legal status. The printing works remains an autonomous public undertaking subordinated to the National Bank of Romania, and its budget is approved every year by government decision.
Advantages and disadvantages
What it improves
- The budget of an entity that prints banknotes is public, with revenue, expenditure, profit and pay all on show.
- The undertaking is self-financing: zero subsidies, zero transfers, zero budget allocations for investment.
- The state collects 7.32 million lei in payments out of the profit.
- The financial discipline indicators are good: zero overdue payments and zero overdue receivables.
- The ratio of expenditure to revenue, 896 lei per 1,000, leaves a comfortable profit margin.
What remains a problem
- The annual budget is approved at the end of August, so eight months of the year it governs have already passed.
- The distribution of the profit does not add up: the three destinations exceed the net profit by 900 thousand lei.
- The annex is reproduced in facsimile, so it can be neither read automatically nor searched as text.
- The planned investment accounts for less than a quarter of the sources available for investment.
- The decision does not explain which products and services generate the 157.9 million lei of operating revenue.
Practical advice
- If you analyse autonomous public undertakings, remember the indicator on row 57: total expenditure per 1,000 lei of total revenue. Here it is 896, so 104 lei of gross profit on every thousand lei taken in.
- For comparisons between years, use row 52, the average monthly earnings per employee calculated on the basis of wage-related expenditure. Here it is 14,184 lei.
- Check row 46 against row 49. The difference between the sources of investment financing and the actual expenditure shows how much is left uncommitted.
- The complete form can only be read from the official PDF edition attached to this article. The annex is reproduced in facsimile, so the text cannot be copied.
- If you follow state budget revenue from dividends and payments, row 35 is the relevant one: 7,320 thousand lei from this undertaking.
- Remember the legal basis: Government Ordinance no. 26/2013, approved by Law no. 47/2014, is the act requiring the budgets of state-owned economic operators to be approved by government decision.
Frequently asked questions
What does the National Bank’s printing works do?
How much profit does it make?
How much does the state take?
How many employees does it have?
Does it receive money from the budget?
Why is the budget approved in August?
Where can I find the full table?
Errors and inconsistencies in the published text
- Annex, row 38: the distribution of the profit exceeds the net profit by 900 thousand lei. Row 38 is called, in the form, „Profitul nerepartizat pe destinațiile prevăzute la Rd.33 – Rd.34 se repartizează la alte rezerve și constituie sursă proprie de finanțare”, the profit not allocated to the destinations in rows 33 and 34 goes to other reserves and forms an own source of financing, so its value has to be the accounting profit left in row 32, minus employee profit sharing in row 33, minus the payments to the state budget in row 34. The calculation gives 13,739 minus 900 minus 7,320, that is 5,519 thousand lei. What is printed is 6,419, exactly the figure obtained if only row 34 is deducted and row 33 is ignored. The consequence shows up in the addition: the three destinations of the profit, 900 plus 7,320 plus 6,419, come to 14,639 thousand lei, 900 more than the net profit of 13,739 in row 26. The difference is equal, to the leu, to employee profit sharing. The rest of the control totals in the form close correctly, including row 7, row 10, row 20 and row 26.
Editorial analysis
The budget of an undertaking that prints banknotes is, by its nature, the only public window onto an activity that is otherwise invisible. And the window shows a small, profitable entity: 127 employees produce revenue of 160,917 thousand lei and a gross profit of 16,815 thousand, that is 104 lei of profit for every 1,000 lei taken in. The form also carries an indicator that few people read, row 56, labour productivity in physical units: 2,518,465 finished products per employee. Multiplied by the 127 employees, that gives a plan of roughly 320 million items for 2026, banknotes among them, but also the other security documents the undertaking prints. It is the most concrete piece of information in the whole act and, paradoxically, the only one that says anything about what the printing works actually does.
The difficulty with the form is not that it hides things, but that it cannot check itself precisely where the public interest is greatest. Row 52, average monthly earnings per employee, shows 14,184 lei. The data published in the same annex give something else: wage-related expenditure in row 11 is 22,626 thousand lei, and divided by the 127 average employees in row 51 and by twelve months it gives 14,846 lei a month. The gap is almost 660 lei, and the explanation for it lies, according to the footnote to the annex, in row 151 of a „Anexă de fundamentare nr. 2”, a supporting annex no. 2 that is not published. The reader is thus left with two figures about pay and no means of reconciling them.
The second gap is in the structure of the expenditure. Of the 141,102 thousand lei of operating expenditure, 82,921 go on goods and services, and another 33,184 are entered under „alte cheltuieli de exploatare”, other operating expenses, that is, almost a quarter of the total in a heading with no breakdown whatsoever. The profit tax is left unexplained as well: 3,076 thousand lei on a gross result of 16,815 thousand means 18.3%, above the rate of 16%, which implies around 2.4 million lei of non-deductible expenses that the act does not show. For an undertaking whose sole shareholder is the state, these two headings are exactly the places where a budget approved by Government decision ought to say more than an internal reporting table.
Finally, the form in which the budget is approved makes it impossible to place in any series. The annex has a single column of figures, „Propuneri an 2026”, proposals for 2026, with no column for the previous year’s outturn and no estimates for the years ahead. There is no way of seeing, therefore, whether revenue is rising or falling against 2025, whether the headcount has changed, whether the payments to the state budget are larger or smaller than last year. A budget approved on 25 August, for a year of which eight months have gone, could at least say where it comes from and where it is heading.
What should be changed
- The previous year’s outturn column, in the same annex. The form ought to be published with at least two columns of figures, outturn for 2025 and proposals for 2026, as the usual templates for revenue and expenditure budgets provide. In practice, anyone would see at a glance whether the 160,917 thousand lei of revenue is an increase or a decrease.
- Publication of the rows of the supporting annex to which the notes point. The footnote ties row 52 to row 151 of an annex that does not appear in the Official Gazette of Romania. If that row were reproduced, it would in practice be possible to explain why the average earnings declared are 14,184 lei while the published figures give 14,846.
- A breakdown of the heading „alte cheltuieli de exploatare”. A sum of 33,184 thousand lei, almost a quarter of operating expenditure, ought to be set out by category in a note to the annex. In practice, it would then be possible to follow what part of the cost of printing money is depreciation, security materials or outsourced services.
- A compulsory arithmetical check before publication. The sum of rows 33, 34 and 38 has to equal row 32, and the rule can be applied automatically to any form of this kind. In practice, the 900 thousand lei error in the distribution of the profit would have been stopped before it reached the Official Gazette of Romania, rather than flagged afterwards.
- A deadline for approval, with a rule for the period that has elapsed. Government Ordinance no. 26/2013 requires the budget to be approved by Government decision, but does not say by when. A fixed deadline, together with a rule on provisional financing in twelve equal parts of the previous year’s budget, would in practice deal with the situation in which an undertaking operates for eight months without an approved budget and then receives one for a year that is almost over.
Original text of the legal act
The text below is reproduced in Romanian, the official form of publication.
The full text, as published in the Official Gazette of Romania
Official Gazette of Romania no. 702 of 25 August 2026 16 pages PDF, 159 KB the act starts on page 11
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This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. For specific situations, consult a licensed attorney or tax advisor.