Hungary Says `Skeletons' in Previous Government's Budget Cost $880 Million
Hungary’s new government found more than 200 billion forint ($878 million) of programs in this year’s budget that its predecessor failed to account for, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff said today.
Orban appointed a fact-finding commission to review the budget after he took office in May. According to Orban’s government, former Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai lied about government spending and the state of the economy.
“We made a list of 65 or 66 cases that the public, the people and we didn’t know about,” Mihaly Varga said in an interview posted on the website of Budapest-based TV2. “Overall, these items total well over 200 billion forint.”
The government’s economic action plan is designed to cover the cost of these “skeletons,” Varga said in an interview with public television channel M1 late yesterday. The plan relies on a special tax on financial institutions, expected to yield 200 billion forint this year, and a spending freeze in public administration, which will save 120 billion forint in 2010.
The sale of carbon-dioxide quotas and the return of people to the state-run pension system may also boost budget revenue, Varga said in the M1 interview.
Hungary has pledged to narrow its budget deficit to 3.8 percent of gross domestic product this year in return for a 20 billion-euro ($25.4 billion) bailout from the International Monetary Fund and the European Union.
“I feel that the target to bring the budget deficit to 3.8 percent by the end of the year is in no danger,” Varga told M1.
To contact the reporter responsible for this story: Zoltan Simon at zsimon@bloomberg.net Edith Balazs in Budapest at ebalazs1@bloomberg.net
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