Ioana Petrescu
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Third Ponta Cabinet
Ioana Maria Petrescu | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Minister of Finance | |
| President | Traian Băsescu |
| Prime Minister | Victor Ponta Third Ponta Cabinet |
| Preceded by | Daniel Chițoiu |
| Succeeded by | Darius Vâlcov |
| Personal details | |
| Born | July 1, 1980 Bucharest, Romania |
| Alma mater | Wellesley College Harvard University |
| Occupation | scholar and activist |
| Profession | economist |
| Website | www.ioanapetrescu.ro |
Ioana Maria Petrescu (born July 1, 1980) is a Romanian economist who served as the country's Finance Minister.[1] She is a public policy scholar at Harvard Kennedy School[2] and runs a Romanian NGO "Pur și Simplu Verde" [3] that supports local governments in their efforts to transition to a greener economy.[4]
The daughter of two engineers, she was brought up by her grandparents in Cornu until she went to school in Bucharest.[5] After graduating from the Mihai Viteazul high school, she received a B.A. in economics and mathematics from Wellesley College, and later a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.
She worked as an N.R.I. Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC, before she became an assistant professor at the University of Maryland.[6] Taking a two-year leave from teaching, she was named in the second half of 2013 a state counselor for economic affairs by Romanian prime-minister Victor Ponta.[7]
Finance Minister of Romania
After serving as economic adviser to the Prime Minister,[8] in 2014 she has been named Romania's first female Finance Minister.[9] While a minister, she pursued policies to cut tax evasion and tax avoidance, promote financial transparency, improve tax compliance, lower the tax burden for businesses and keep fiscal discipline.[10] She cut the Social Security Tax paid by employers by 5pp to stimulate the business sector during the recovery from the Financial Crisis.[11] She was considered the most performing minister in the Cabinet in June 2014 by the representatives of the business leaders.[12] Other more notable achievements as a minister include the digitalization of the tax administration by the creation of the Personal Virtual Space,[13] an online system of communication between taxpayers and tax administration, the introduction of the tax lottery to increase VAT compliance [14] and the cap on cash transactions, a measure meant to encourage the use of other payment methods and the increase in the bank account use in Romania.[15]
