Slovakia can increase expenditures in its state budget for next year. This is because in its autumn deficit and the debt notification, Eurostat confirmed the expectations of the Finance Ministry and decreased last year’s public debt for Slovakia under the 55-percent threshold as a result of the incorporation of the new ESA 2010 methodology.
This means in practice that the penalty ensuing from the third level of the constitutional debt brake, which is that expenditures in the state budget cannot be increased in annual terms, will thus ultimately not be applied. According to the current notification, the gross debt of the general government in Slovakia in 2013 amounted to 54.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and the general government deficit was 2.63 percent of GDP.
