Slovakia posted a state budget deficit of €980 million at the end of last year, the Finance Ministry reported on Monday, stressing that this is the lowest deficit to be recorded in the past eight years. The deficit is 1.23 percent of GDP lower than the projection. The state budget's total income for the whole of last year amounted to €14.2 billion, while expenditure stood at €15.2 billion. The volume of tax collected last year exceeded the projected figure, chiefly in corporate tax. Other budget incomes were higher than planned as well, including dividends. "Last year was very successful from the viewpoint of servicing the state debt. We repeatedly managed to finance it at negative interest rates, which means that investors paid us to lend us money. We thus saved €16.1 million on servicing the state debt last year," stated the ministry. The average interest rate on the state debt was almost 2.5 percent, an all-time low in the history of the independent Slovakia.
But the opposition is not so impressed. MPs such as Soňa Gaborčáková from OĽaNO-NOVA would have liked to see more investment in the social sector. "Given how well the economy is doing, measures for the most vulnerable are minimal. Social services are one big disaster. The population is ageing, nursing facilities are in short supply, and we have nowhere to place the increasing number of cancer patients and people with mental health issues," she said adding that the 'tax bonus' for parents hasn't been increased in years either. The fellow Opposition Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) party is convinced that the Government has made changes without proceeding with a concise, strategic social system concept. "Between 2012-2016, governments led by Smer-SD had record growth in public revenues to hand. They failed to make adequate use of them in order to reduce the burden of taxes and levies on workers, to finance solidarity and to counter growth in the public debt. The lack of a concept is seen also in the fierce weakening of the second, capitalisation pillar of the pension system and the recent law on nursery schools," said liberal MP Eugen Jurzyca.
