SLOVAKIA’S public finance deficit fell from 8.1 percent of GDP in 2010 to 4.6 percent at the end of 2011, the Finance Ministry announced at press conference on January 26. The result was better than expected: the ministry’s had previously predicted that the deficit would fall to 4.9 percent in 2011, the TASR newswire reported.
The state deficit for 2011 was €3.186 billion, €262 million less than had been earlier projected, with the ministry stating that this was because of a reduction in state expenditures of €1.2 billion compared to last year, as well as a rise in state revenues.
The final numbers on Slovakia’s efforts to trim its deficit will be announced at the end of March, when all member countries must send their final data to Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics office, TASR wrote.
