BRATISLAVA, October 12, (WEBNOVINY) — The Cabinet of Iveta Radicova, which lost a confidence vote in parliament on Tuesday, has approved the draft budget of the public administration for 2012-2014 with a comment at is Wednesday’s session. Although Cabinet ministers debated the draft, it will depend on further political developments whether and in what form it will be passed by lawmakers. It is not out of the question that Slovakia may be run according to a provisional budget. If the parliament fails to approve the budget bill, the budget for this year will be followed also from January of next year, until a proper budget is passed. According to the law on budgetary rules, the draft budget has to go to parliament by October 15 at the latest.
Coalition partners in the government of Iveta Radicova agreed on priorities of individual ministries last week after several weeks of talks. The Health and Environment Ministry should also see more funding along with the Ministries of Transport and Education, which received higher allocations before, and some priorities of the Defense and Interior Ministry should also be earmarked sources thanks to transfers between individual chapters. Priorities of individual ministries should also be financed from a bank tax that will be higher than originally suggested and higher payroll duties of state-run companies and revenues from the sale of emission quotas.
The revised draft budget bill with incorporated approved priorities counts on a state budget deficit of EUR 3.321 billion next year. The latest version of the state budget projects cash revenues of EUR 15.36 billion and expenditures of EUR 18.681 billion. For comparison, state budget revenues were projected at EUR 13.148 billion and expenditures at EUR 16.958 billion this year, while this year’s state budget gap is projected at EUR 3.81 billion, which is 4.9 percent of the GDP.
The Cabinet also gave the green light to the draft law on a special levy for selected financial institutions and also approved the proposal for expedited procedure for this draft. The so-called bank tax should be introduced in early 2012 based on the law. The proposal sets a levy at 0.2 of selected liabilities [corporate deposits — SITA note], but Finance Minister Ivan Miklos has already announced that the rate should be higher, between 0.2 and 0.4 percent.
SITA