Slovakia without balanced budget

The Slovak economy will grow significantly slower this year than originally expected. The Finance Ministry's latest macroeconomic forecast also confirms the expected slowdown. According to the document, Slovakia's gross domestic product will grow by 2.4% this year. The Finance Ministry's analysts thus revised down by 1.1% their previous estimate of this year's economic growth from June. They also reduced their estimate of next year's growth by 1.1 percentage points to 2.3%. Slovakia will not have its first balanced budget this year. This is despite the fact that this was envisaged in the state budget that Parliament approved. Finance Minister Ladislav Kamenicky confirmed this on Thursday after the release of the current macroeconomic forecast.