Environmental protection expenditures at the national level amounted to 19.8 billion RON in 2023, equivalent to 1.2% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), according to data published on Friday by the National Institute of Statistics (NIS), inform agerpres.ro.
According to the official statistics, in Romania, the highest environmental protection expenditures were recorded in the field of waste management at specialized producers (70.3% of total expenditures in the field of waste management), while the highest investments in this segment were recorded in the field of wastewater management at non-specialized producers (53.1% of total investments in the field of wastewater management).
Overall, in 2023, at the national level, environmental protection investments accounted for 31.1% of total environmental protection expenditures. Of these, investments by non-specialized producers have the largest share in the total (41.9%), followed by investments by general government (40.4%) and specialized producers (17.7%).
At the same time, non-specialized producers recorded the highest environmental protection expenditures in the electricity, heat, gas and hot water production and supply sector (27.4%), in the water collection, treatment and distribution sector (22.4%) and in the manufacturing sector (20.8%).
The investments allocated to environmental protection in the field of wastewater management amounted to 2.96 billion RON, current prices, followed by waste management with 1.94 billion RON, current prices.
Moreover, the highest expenditures for environmental protection were recorded in the area of waste management (12.21 billion RON, current prices) and then in wastewater management (4.23 billion RON, current prices).
INS data reveal that, according to the categories of producers, the highest expenditures for environmental protection were reported by producers specialized in the field of waste management (with 95% of the expenditures of this category of producers).
At the same time, the expenditures of non-specialized producers in the field of wastewater management accounted for 41.8% of the expenditures of this category of producers (62.3% of the environmental protection expenditures at national level for this environmental field).