Any increase in the VAT level for books, given that Romania is the smallest book market per capita in the EU, will increase the risk of insolvencies and bankruptcies in this sector, states the Board of Directors of the Romanian Publishers Association (AER) in a press release sent to AGERPRES on Wednesday.
„The value chain of the book, which includes authors, publishers, booksellers and librarians, has been at the limit of survival for many years, so that any measure that affects one of the actors can, in the medium term, unbalance all the others,” the AER release reads, agerpres reports.
Also, the Association of Publishers in Romania considers that the fiscal measures aimed at the liberal professions will have a negative impact regarding the activity of translators, and states that the lack of any support measure for the opening and operation of physical bookstores „penalizes any initiative in the field and affects the distribution book”.
„Romania is far from being a paradise of written culture, because the support measures, present in the national legislation or the stimulation measures, applied at the European level, are not transposed into reality. We have in mind, in particular, the non-compliance with the law on libraries (no. 334/2002), which provides, in article 40, paragraph 12, the annual renewal of the book stock of any library with fifty books („documents”) per thousand inhabitants,” the press release states.
„The forced centralization of cultural institutions, including libraries, under the pretext of making the spending of funds more efficient, is another reason for concern: the state budget does not suffer from any alleged financial hemorrhage in the written culture sector, so the estimated savings that will be achieved on this occasion will have negligible values. What will be obtained, instead, is a long-term imbalance of the cultural sector, including in terms of attractiveness for employment,” the press release states.