Ako povedal pre The Slovak Spectator dňa 5.10. 2009
Radovan Ďurana z INESS, v návrhu budúcoročného rozpočtu vidíme riziko
nenaplnenia plánovaných daňových príjmov, ktoré kvôli pomalšiemu než
očakávanému ekonomickému rastu môžu viesť k prehĺbeniu plánovaného
deficitu.
FINANCE Minister Ján Počiatek had been rather secretive
about most details of his draft state budget but it sailed through the cabinet
meeting of Prime Minister Robert Fico’s government with an ease quite untypical
for such plans.
The government ministers from the parties of the ruling
coalition – Smer, the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) and Slovak
National Party (SNS) – raised their hands in favour of the state budget for
2010 which forecasts revenues of €12.531 billion and authorises expenditures of
€16.277 billion – producing a deficit of €3.746 billion for 2010, among the
highest ever.
Prime Minister Fico called the budget “good and realistic”
and said that his government has resisted the “magic of giveaways”. The
opposition, however, has been somewhat harsher, calling the proposal “bad news
for Slovakia’s citizens”.
Počiatek’s budget assumes an increase in revenues of 15
percent year-on-year. The finance minister said that despite the higher
deficit, the proposed budget will still mean a launch of fiscal austerity,
which in 2012 should result in an annual deficit under 3 percent of GDP.
Next year the budget approved by the cabinet will produce a
public finance deficit of 5.5 percent of GDP.
Ivan Štefanec of the strongest opposition party, the Slovak
Democratic and Christian Union (SDKÚ) does not really trust the government’s
promise to push down the public finance deficit to that level next year.
“Considering the fact that the government so far has not
demonstrated any interest in saving the people’s money, I seriously doubt that
they will do it next year,” Štefanec told The Slovak Spectator.
Počiatek, however, describes the budget as frugal. Fico said
the ministries next year will save approximately €750 million in operational
costs when compared to this year’s budget, adding that the state will be saving
money in this way even in the election year, the SITA newswire reported.
Economists and market watchers are more reserved when
estimating the prospects of this budget being met or maintained.
“We see a risk in
reaching the budgetary tax incomes; slower economic growth and a higher
shortfall in tax revenues could lead to exceeding the planned deficit,” Radovan
Ďurana of the Institute of Economic and Social Studies (INESS) told The Slovak
Spectator.
According to Ďurana,
the government has missed the chance over the past year to adopt legislative
measures which would have made it possible for the government to reduce the
expenditures of public administration and government procurement over the long
term.
“It could have
adopted laws to reduce the waste of mandatory expenditure next year,” Ďurana
said. “With the exception of capital expenditure there are only minimal savings
compared to this year’s budget, which in fact was tuned as expansive and this
is why it is good to compare it [the draft] with the 2008 budget, to which the
proposed 2010 expenditures are considerably higher without including the effect
of higher drawing of EU funds or in subsidising the [social] insurer.”
Prime Minister Fico explained that almost half of the 15
percent increase in revenue can be attributed to more intense drawing down of
EU funds which the cabinet plans to significantly accelerate. The cabinet plans
to draw more than €3.5 billion from the EU even though so far the drawing down
of available EU funds has reached only a couple dozen million euros.
“We are optimistic that we will be able to draw a large part
of these finances,” Fico said as quoted by SITA.
Ďurana explained that
the EU funds themselves have a neutral effect on the budget.
“Those EU funds are
only becoming revenues that are subsequently drawn,” Ďurana said, adding that
indeed failure to draw upon EU funds can have a positive impact on the deficit,
since money from Slovakia required for co-financing would not be needed, thus
keeping state spending lower.
Ďurana finds the
15-percent increase in expenditures to be steep, regardless of the source of
the funds.
“In the context of
possibly saving public spending and mandatory spending, we consider the 15
percent increase far too steep and the government has definitely not used all
the possibilities to cut the deficit and thus the state debt, the servicing of
which will burden the state budget more significantly each year,” Ďurana added.
Ďurana said the Czech
finance minister put proposals on the table, and the Czech parliament passed
them, designed to reduce that country’s deficit.
“It did so despite
the fact that the package also included an increase in the tax burden to boost
the state’s revenues as well as the savings on the spending side which were
more extensive and pertained to social sphere as well,” Ďurana said.
Štefanec said that the proposal to increase expenditure by
€1.5 billion more than the same government requested one year ago accompanied
with a drop in state revenues is more evidence of the government wasting funds.
“We [the SDKÚ] would support a draft which clearly defines
the priorities for solutions to the crisis and that starts consolidating public
finances,” Štefanec told The Slovak Spectator. “I do not think that the current
government can supply this to us.”
Who gets how much?
The Ministry of Construction and Regional Development will
see the highest percentage increase in spending authority, a 29.3 percent
year-on-year boost with expenditure of both EU funds and national co-financing
reaching €494.38 million.
The Ministries of Agriculture and Economy are also among the
luckier ministries since both will see their purses swell by 18.7 percent
year-on-year with the authorised agriculture expenditure approved at €1.159
billion and the Economy Ministry having €319.167 million available to spend,
according to SITA.
The Health Ministry will see its budget increase by 10.3
percent year-on-year to reach €1.44 billion while €2.348 billion would flow to
the Education Ministry, an 8.2 percent year-on-year increase. The Labour
Ministry’s will see a 4.1 percent increase, to €1.967 billion.
The departments of defence, interior, culture and foreign
affairs will need to tighten their belts next year. The Ministry of Defence’s
budget will shrink by 21.3 percent to €822.944 million while the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs will get 18.1 percent less than last year at €107.954 million.
The Culture Ministry’s wallet will shrink by 9.8 percent to €169.773 million
and the Interior Ministry will see a 9.7 percent cut in its pocket money to
€838.575 million.
Consolidation of public finances in Slovakia should be done
more quickly, said the governor of Slovakia’s central bank (NBS), Ivan Šramko,
as quoted by the TASR newswire.
„I arrive at such a conclusion based on a resolution we have
passed at the European Central Bank (ECB) governors’ council,” Šramko said.
The resolution recommends the countries which have “normal”
public finances should reduce their public deficit by significantly more than
0.5 percent of GDP next year and that countries with greater debts and larger
deficits should reach a level of deficit reduction of at least 1 percent of
GDP, TASR wrote.
“Based on this document, I recommended speeding up the
consolidation [in Slovakia], at least to the level of 1 percent of GDP,” said
Šramko.
The
Slovak Spectator, 5 Oct 2009, Beata Balogová
