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Budget execution 2016–2025

Where town halls’ money goes, and in which month it is paid

Of 100 lei, how many go to roads, schools, social assistance? The answer for every commune, city and county in 2025, plus the investment calendar since 2016, from the Ministry of Finance’s budget execution. In 2025, communes paid 22 of every 100 lei of investment in December.

Search also finds villages, with or without diacritics. Tap or click the map to pick a place.

100 lei

Of every 100 lei, communes give 19 to administration and 18 to roads

In 2025, the 2,862 communes paid 46.5 bn lei together. This is how 100 lei are split, on average:

lei out of every 100 lei spent

  • Town hall and administration19
  • Roads, streets and transport18
  • Social assistance17
  • Water, lighting, housing and energy17
  • Schools, kindergartens and nurseries11
  • Waste, sewage and environment11
  • Culture, sport and parks4
  • Local police and fire brigade1
  • Health1
  • Other1

The map shows, for each place, the item it spent the most on. The figures include the bodies the town hall runs: schools, libraries, sometimes hospitals, counted under their own items, not under administration. Social assistance includes the wages of personal assistants of people with severe disabilities, paid by the town hall.

Size

Small communes spend nearly twice as much per resident

Communes of up to 1,500 residents spend 7,202 lei per resident (median); those of 5,001–10,000 residents spend 3,952 lei. Of a small commune’s money, 24% goes to administration, against 18% in one of 5,001–10,000 residents.

ResidentsCommunesPer residentAdministration
up to 1,5004657,202 lei24%
1,501–3,0001,1875,087 lei22%
3,001–5,0008124,197 lei20%
5,001–10,0003533,952 lei18%
over 10,000454,369 lei17%

Medians for each group of communes, 2025. The map shows the administration share of each place’s money.

Investment

A third of communes’ money goes to investment

Investment is capital spending from the local budget (title 71): construction, roads, networks, equipment. In 2025 it was 36% of communes’ money; the median commune invested 32%. From one commune to the next, the share runs from zero to over 80%.

EU-funded and recovery-plan projects are booked under other budget titles (56, 58, 60 and 61): another 13 lei in every 100 in 2025. They are not counted as investment, except in the check in the election chapter. These are payments in the year, not project values: a work paid over two years shows up in both.

The calendar

In 297 communes, more than half of 2025’s investment was paid in December

If payments were even from month to month, each month would hold 8%. In December, communes together paid 25% of the year’s investment in 2016, 21% in 2020, 21% in 2024 and 22% in 2025. In eight of the ten years, December held at least a fifth; in the other two, 19% (2017) and 14% (2023).

The median commune paid 16% of 2025’s investment in December; the 297 are among the 2,837 communes with data. The map shows December’s share in 2025; the calendar shows every year.

The data show when money was paid, not why, and only for investment under title 71. With a place chosen, its share appears in the calendar.

The elections

The test written in advance failed: the share was above its neighbours in 2016 and 2024, not in 2020

The investment share of communes’ money was 5.6 percentage points above the average of the neighbouring years in 2016 (median, commune by commune; the only neighbouring year is 2017, the weakest) and 7.6 in 2024, both years with local elections in June. In 2020, with the elections moved to September, the difference was −0.7. The highest share in ten years is 2024 (42%); the lowest are 2017 (23%) and 2023 (27%).

Before any calculation we wrote a test: all three years above their neighbours. With investment as title 71, as written, it failed because of 2020. Adding EU-funded and PNRR projects (+5.8, +1.1 and +6.1) makes it pass, but we chose that definition after seeing the result, so it is only a hint. The months show no build-up before the vote: in June 2016 and June 2024 payments are no higher than in the surrounding months.

2024 had local, European, presidential and parliamentary elections; 2016 and 2020, local and parliamentary. National programmes and EU money keep their own calendars. The data do not separate these causes.

A place and a county

For every place, sentences ready to quote and a table

Search for a commune, a city, a village or a county. Its card appears below the map: sentences generated from the data, a comparison with places of the same size and with the county, the payment calendar and a table to download. A county adds up its town halls; the County Council, which pays for hospitals, county roads and child protection, has a separate budget. Go to the card ↓

One place

Search for a commune or city above, or tap the map, to see its card.

Counties

All 41 counties and Bucharest in one table

Each name leads to a page with every place in the county and a CSV table to download.

CountyPlacesPaid in 2025Per residentInvestmentDecember (median commune)County Council
București722.1 bn lei12,887 lei16%––
Timiș995.4 bn lei8,312 lei18%13%629.6 m lei
Bihor1015.4 bn lei9,706 lei19%14%832.4 m lei
Iași985.1 bn lei6,720 lei21%22%1.7 bn lei
Cluj814.6 bn lei6,795 lei21%16%1.4 bn lei
Constanța704.4 bn lei6,664 lei20%15%1.5 bn lei
Prahova1043.9 bn lei5,605 lei19%18%1.4 bn lei
Suceava1143.8 bn lei5,859 lei22%23%1.1 bn lei
Dolj1113.5 bn lei5,868 lei21%10%789.6 m lei
Bacău933.4 bn lei5,633 lei23%15%1.1 bn lei
Brașov583.3 bn lei6,026 lei19%16%1.3 bn lei
Galați653.2 bn lei6,343 lei21%21%1.4 bn lei
Argeș1023.1 bn lei5,484 lei25%19%1.2 bn lei
Ilfov403.1 bn lei5,741 lei21%11%768.1 m lei
Hunedoara693 bn lei8,319 lei15%15%834.8 m lei
Maramureș762.9 bn lei6,381 lei19%13%1.5 bn lei
Mureș1022.9 bn lei5,546 lei20%19%1.1 bn lei
Arad782.6 bn lei6,447 lei22%20%1.2 bn lei
Sibiu642.5 bn lei6,521 lei17%13%1.2 bn lei
Olt1122.5 bn lei6,566 lei23%15%769.6 m lei
Alba782.5 bn lei7,673 lei22%19%796.2 m lei
Neamț832.4 bn lei5,199 lei27%14%932.6 m lei
Dâmbovița892.3 bn lei4,825 lei22%18%1.1 bn lei
Botoșani782.3 bn lei5,760 lei32%23%863.3 m lei
Vaslui862.2 bn lei5,891 lei25%10%749.7 m lei

For reporters

How to use it for a local story

  1. Search for the commune or city. The card has seven computed sentences, with the place’s rank in the county and among places of the same size.
  2. Compare only like with like: a commune of 800 residents with other small communes, not with a city.
  3. Copy the text or the citation from the card, or download the table: every place, every year (CSV).
  4. Ask the town hall. The data show how much was paid and when, not why. A large sum under one item may come from one project, a heavy December from a transfer that arrived late: get the town hall’s explanation before drawing a conclusion.

How to cite

Ministry of Finance, budget execution (Forexebug), via Transparenta.eu; calculations: mariuscomper.uk/cheltuielile-primariilor/ (November 2026).

Method and limits

Where the numbers come from

The money. Annual payments of each town hall from the Ministry of Finance’s budget execution (Forexebug), read through the Transparenta.eu portal, for 2016–2025, in the consolidated form of the town hall and the bodies it runs. It covers 3,187 town halls (communes, towns, municipalities, Bucharest and its six sectors) and the 41 county councils, each separate. Transfers between public bodies (economic chapter 51) are removed; they would otherwise be counted twice.

The items. The 11 groups add up the functional codes of the budget classification: administration (51, 54, 55), roads and transport (84), social assistance (68), water, lighting, housing and energy (70, 81), schools (65), waste, sewage and environment (74), culture, sport and parks (67, without 67.06), religious services (67.06), local police and fire brigade (61), health (66), and the rest.

Investment is payments booked under title 71, non-financial assets. EU-funded and recovery-plan projects booked under titles 56, 58, 60 and 61 are not included; they are 13% of communes’ money in 2025. December: investment payments made in December divided by the year’s investment payments, computed from cumulative monthly execution, against the cumulative December total, which differs slightly from the annual-execution total in a few communes; shown only for years in which a town hall paid at least 100,000 lei of investment. In 2016, monthly execution starts in March.

Per resident means payments in the year divided by the resident population of the 2021 census (INS), for every year; in very small communes a single large investment moves the number a lot. Bucharest’s sectors have no population in this source. Amounts are in current lei, not adjusted for inflation.

The elections. The test was written before any calculation: the investment share (title 71) in an election year (2016, 2020, 2024) against the average of the neighbouring years, commune by commune, plus a permutation over years. Result: the median commune’s difference is +5.6 percentage points in 2016, −0.7 in 2020 and +7.6 in 2024; the test required all three above zero and failed. The permutation over years (5 of 120 triples of years score as high, p = 0.042) comes from the dips of 2017 and 2023, so it is no evidence. The check added afterwards, with titles 56, 58, 60 and 61 (EU funds and the recovery plan, which exist from 2022 and also hold current spending) included, gives +5.8, +1.1 and +6.1 (p = 0.033); it was added after the first result, so we present it as a hint. The calendar test (a rise in payments before the election month) failed in 2016 and 2024; September 2020 holds 14.1% of the year’s investment, the largest share September has in the ten years, against 12.0% in 2019 (an observation made after the test; October 2025 holds 14.3%). For 2016 there is no 2015 in the source, so the neighbouring-years average is 2017 alone, the weakest year.

What it does not show. It shows no projects, contracts or names of people, nor why a payment fell in a given month. A place with high or low spending is not, for that reason, well or badly run. Each place is assigned to its county by the SIRUTA administrative register; county councils are not included in the places total.

Related pages: how much of the wage bill local taxes pay, territorial reorganisation, what the state does with 1,000 lei.