Government bleeding Budapest dry? City’s budget deficit reaches EUR 809M
The Budapest Assembly accepted the municipality’s 2022 budget on Wednesday, forecasting just over 297 billion forints (EUR 809m) in budget revenues and just below 411 billion forints in expenditures.
The assembly voted with 18 votes in favour and 11 against the proposal. The municipality allocated 6.1 billion forints for loan repayments. According to the budget, the municipality’s deficit next year will stand at just over 119.7 billion forints. The deficit will be funded from loans, bonds and revenues from deposits, the decree said.
The Budapest municipality’s 2022 budget is 50 billion forints (EUR 136m) in the red, and it could only be offset by government funding or loans, the leader of the opposition Socialist party’s chapter in the city assembly said on Wednesday.
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Speaking ahead of a regular assembly meeting, Csaba Horváth accused the government of “creating a situation where the municipality is
forced to plan a budget with a 50 billion forint hole.”
The city will remain operational only over the next six months unless the deficit is funded, he said.
Horváth said the city was “left with overdue development projects worth some 1,000 billion forints from the past 12 years”, which warrants a new agreement with the government to restore balance to the city’s finances, he said.
Horváth also called on the government to take over one-third of the funding of Budapest’s public transport.
Regarding the issue of the alleged sale of City Hall, Horváth said the mandate of the investigative committee will be extended by a month “to ensure a fair investigation”. “Should no evidence surface during that period of time, we can conclude that [the allegations] were …
a Fidesz lie,”
he said.
Photo: MTI/Attila Kovács
Source: MTI