BELT-TIGHTENING to reduce public spending will also affect the state administration, including the president’s office, ministries, the General Prosecutor’s Office and the Slovak Intelligence Service, it has emerged.
The parliament office will need to cut its expenditures by €20 million in 2011. Even though this year’s budget was €41.5 million, the Finance Ministry has proposed just €21.8 million as next year's budget.
According to the 2011 expense plans disclosed by the Ministry of Finance, the budget cut for the parliamentary administration will see the biggest proportional fall.
The president’s office will have its budget cut by €600,000 to €3.4 million. The Defence Ministry will probably lose €88 million. This year it had a budget of €823 million, which will plummet next year to €735 million.
The Interior Ministry will lose 10 percent of its budget, equivalent to a reduction of €36.6 million, to €747.9 million in 2011. The Education Ministry will also get less money. This year, it had €2.3 billion to spend; next year this will fall by €300 million.
Almost €6 million will be cut from the budget of the General Prosecutor’s Office. Meanwhile, the budget of the Slovak Information Service (SIS), Slovakia’s intelligence agency, will decrease by more than €4 million. Ministries and other governmental agencies will share a budget of €14.830 billion in 2011, according to the Finance Ministry’s proposal. This amounts to a €1.447 billion decrease in public spending. The limits on expenditure cover all spending, including that from EU resources and co-financing.
