Government tables 2019 draft budget
June 16th, 2018A pro-government columnist and an independent analyst find the government’s draft budget well-balanced. A left-wing commentator speculates that the government will have even more opportunity to spend large sums at its own discretion.
Magyar Hírlap’s Ottó Nagy finds the government’s budget proposal for 2019 well-balanced and conservative. Nagy welcomes the government’s efforts to keep the deficit low despite its expectation of 4.1 per cent GDP growth. Another positive element the pro-government columnist identifies in the draft budget is the increase in health care, education and defence spending.
On Portfolio, Gergely Csiki also finds the government’s budget draft balanced. Csiki points out that the draft doesn’t indicate major changes in the government’s economic vision, which helps boost market confidence. Csiki underscores that the government plans to allocate an as yet unspecified sum to offer significant wage hikes in the public sector – the first raise since 2008.
In Népszava, Miklós Bonta suspects that the government’s intention in increasing the budgetary reserve is to channel even more money to entrepreneurs allied to it. The left-wing commentator interprets warnings by PM Orbán as well as National Bank President Matolcsy about a potential major global economic crisis, as a pretext to allocate more than ever for contingencies. Miklós fears that the 350 billion Forints allocated for such purposes will be spent in a discretional way by the government, and so the money will end up in the pockets of its friends.