Orbán cabinet confirms deficit at 110 pc of full-year target by end of September

Hungary’s cash flow-based budget, excluding local councils, ran a 1,496.5 billion forints (EUR 4.6bn) deficit at the end of September, the finance ministry confirmed in a second reading on Thursday.

The deficit reached 110 percent of the 1,360.7 billion forint full-year target.

The central budget deficit reached 1,542.9 billion forints, while separate state funds had a 24.4 billion surplus and social insurance funds a 22.0 billion forints surplus.

In September alone, the general government had a surplus of 149.8 billion forints, which by and large equalled the sums transferred by the European Commission to the Hungarian central budget that month, the ministry said.

The government continues to project the full-year ESA deficit at 2.4 percent of GDP as targeted and economic growth over 4 percent, the ministry said.

As a result of economic performance budget revenues increase, and ensure the stability of the general government parallel with delivering social goals as well as the financing of domestic and EU developments, it said.

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As we wrote last week, the National Bank of Hungary’s (NBH – Magyar Nemzeti Bank) Monetary Council has decided to increase Hungary’s gold reserves significantly. As a result, the stock of precious metal rose from 3.1 tons to 31.5 tons, i.e. by a factor of ten, in October 2018. The National Bank of Hungary purchased gold for the first time since 1986. Following the significant increase in physical form, the stock of gold reserves has already been transported to Hungary, read more HERE.

Source: MTI