Hungarian parliament approves 2020 budget

Lawmakers approved the 2020 budget on Friday with a vote of 127 for, 58 against and no abstentions.

The budget targets revenue of 21,426.0 billion forints and expenditures of 21,793.0 billion forints, producing a deficit of 367.0 billion forints.

The 2020 deficit target is less than half of the 998.4 billion forint target for 2019.

The budget targets a deficit of 1.0 percent of GDP, calculated according to the European Union’s accrual-based accounting methodology. The target is under the 1.5 percent-of-GDP target in Hungary’s updated Convergence Programme submitted to Brussels in April.

Hungary’s year-end public debt level, relative to GDP, is set to fall from 68.6 percent targeted for 2019 to 65.5 percent for 2020.

The Hungarian budget sets aside 488 billion forint in reserves, including 378 billion forints in the National Protection Fund, and 110 billion forints for “extraordinary government measures”, more than double the total of 225 billion forints of reserves in the 2019 budget.

The cost of debt maintenance targeted in the budget is 1,078.5 billion forints.

The budget assumes GDP growth of “around 4 percent” and consumer price inflation of 2.8 percent.

Speaking after the vote, Mihály Varga, the finance minister, said the budget’s adoption showed that the vast majority of lawmakers agreed to strengthening families, protecting economic achievements, maintaining the country’s security, and pursuing an economic policy based on tax cuts and wage increases. As he said before he set out the main goals of the 2020 budget, namely support for families and ensuring resources for the action plan to protect the economy, read more HERE.

Speaking at a press conference alongside Máté Kocsis, the ruling Fidesz party’s group leader, Varga said the 2020 budget would channel more resources to all spending areas. Families with children and teachers are at the heart of budget measures and all necessary resources will be put towards implementing the family protection plan, he said.

Next year, support for families will increase to almost 2,228 billion forints, or around two-and-a-half times the 2010 figure.

Varga noted that extra resources would be channeled to education, culture, leisure activities and tourism without endangering the deficit target of 1 percent of GDP or further reductions to the public debt.

The opposition Socialists said that all Hungarian economic indicators were worse than in neighbouring countries. Socialist MP Lajos Korozs singled out pensioners, saying that the gap between seniors and the younger generations would increase due to the government’s plans to raise wages by 8.5 percent while increasing pensions by only 2.8 percent.

The purchasing power of pensions in Romania is higher than in Hungary, he said, adding that pensions worth below 100,000 forints (EUR 307) a month should be raised.

https://dailynewshungary.com/hungarian-central-bank-deficit-target-realistic-if-reserves-not-depleted/

Source: MTI