Parliament is debating a report on the state’s final account for 2012. In his presentation, the opposition SaS Neo-liberal party chief Richard Sulík said that Slovakia’s public debt is rising because of actions of the government of SMER-SD. According to him, it cannot be that chaos in the tax administration alone is responsible for last year’s increase of the general government debt by more than 8 percentage points to 52.1 percent of gross domestic product.
The Finance Ministry states the situation in the tax administration as one of the reasons for the growth of public debt. However, Sulík is convinced it was more a consequence of the current left-leaning government. “The Economy of the Slovak Republic isn’t growing because of adverse Socialist measures that make life difficult for businesses; they are increasing tax rates, but not tax revenue,” Sulík said. In response to the criticism, Finance Minister Peter Kažimír argued that the slowdown of the Slovak economy and lower revenue of the government are primarily linked to the external environment.
