The Finance Ministry on June 23 raised its forecast for this year’s public-finance deficit because of what it says is worse-than-expected tax revenues, the TASR newswire reported.
As part of his economic and financial outlook, Finance Minister Ján Počiatek forecast an end-of-year public-finance deficit of 6.98 percent, up from last year’s 6.8 percent and the ministry’s earlier prediction of 5.5 percent. According to him, there is room for a targeted deficit cut either by cost-savings or increasing revenues.
“It’s possible to do on the revenue side via sales of redundant property or greenhouse-gas emission rights,” he said for the TASR newswire. Počiatek rejected suggestions that the deficit resulted from increased government spending.
“It resulted from a change in taxes ... the state is spending even less than is projected in the budget,” he said. As of Wednesday the state had spent €6.5 billion of the projected €16.3 billion for 2010.
Source: TASR
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.
