House Okays 2022 State Budget, With Deficit of 4.94% GDP
Bratislava, December 14 (TASR) – Parliament approved the 2022 state budget on Tuesday, with 91 out of 146 present lawmakers voting for the bill.
In the next year, Slovakia is supposed to run a deficit of 4.94 percent of GDP. This year’s deficit is forecast to equal about 8 percent of GDP.
In the following years, the public finances deficit is prognosed to decrease to 2.7 percent of GDP, with a balanced budget to be achieved in 2024. In order to make that happen, however, consolidation measures worth almost €4 billion are needed, according to the Finance Ministry.
The state budget garnered support from caucuses of OLaNO, SaS and We Are Family, with Smer-SD and far-right LSNS voting against. As for independent lawmakers, lending their support were Jana Zitnanska, Alexandra Pivkova, Miriam Sutekova, Jan Kroslak and Juraj Seliga, with Jozef Simko, Miroslav Kollar and Tomas Valasek abstaining and the rest voting against.
The public administration’s total projected 2022 income stands at €44.2 billion and expenditures at €49.4 billion.
The public administration’s multi-year budget expects the gross debt of Slovakia to culminate in 2021-22 at 61.5 percent of GDP, then drop under 59 percent of GDP by 2024.
According to the budget bill, the allocation of €4,59 billion is expected under the recovery plan in 2022-24, with the bulk of these resources earmarked next year for the green economy (€454 million), education (€323 million) and health (€218 million).
