By bringing together and re-allocating some previously planned budget expenditures, the Finance Ministry will attempt to save €332 million (Sk10 billion) to use to maintain economic growth and employment in Slovakia during the global economic crisis, the Finance Ministry stated in materials approved by the government on Wednesday, January 28.
"The goal of this step is to identify expenditures whose realisation isn't necessary. These expenditures will then be allocated to measures aimed at supporting demand via effective instruments of fiscal politics," the ministry told the TASR newswire. It said it would attempt to come up with specific measures by February 11.
The European Commission has predicted that Slovakia's GDP growth in 2009 will be only 2.7 percent, compared to the Slovak Finance Ministry's existing forecast of 4.6 percent, the figure on which the 2009 budget was based.
The re-evaluation of economic growth has come in response to the worsening effects of the global financial and economic crisis. At the same time, the EC expects GDP in the EU as a whole to shrink by 1.8 percent in 2009.
Representatives of Slovakia’s central bank, the National Bank of Slovakia (NBS), have already admitted that its prognosis might have to be revised, while the Finance Ministry will release its new predictions at the beginning of February. TASR
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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