NEWS
Prime Minister Pahor outlines state budget and budget memorandum proposal for 2010 and 2011
At today’s 15th extraordinary session of the National Assembly, the Slovenian Prime Minister, Borut Pahor, accompanied by the Minister of Finance, Franci Križanič, outlined the state budget and budget memorandum proposal for the next two years.
Mr Pahor said that "the budget is a fundamental tool to maintaining the balance of public finance flows; the Government intends to achieve a balance in development in Slovenia by introducing performance-based budgets for these two years, by applying fiscal rules and by making structural adjustments."
(Foto: Tamino Petelinšek/STA)
Prime Minister Pahor said that, for Slovenia, the financial crisis had caused a substantial decrease in international trade, on which our economy strongly depends. "Although the stabilisation of the economic situation in certain major world economies gives some hope that we are nearing, let us say, the bottom of the crisis, and certain world leaders are already daring to speak of the time, when exit strategies will be devised, all relevant forecasts nevertheless indicate that the recovery will be extremely gradual," he added.
"Considering the relatively high deficit and increased government debt, public finance policy in the following years will, as in this year, be based on two crucial objectives: to achieve macroeconomic stability and to support long-term growth. The adoption of anti-crisis measures is accompanied by an increased medium- and long-term risk to public finance stability, but, like other countries, we also must act through short-term measures."
Outlining the current situation, Mr Pahor also said that in this time of adverse economic conditions, Slovenian fiscal policy faces a dilemma: to follow, uncompromisingly, the Maastricht criteria specifying the excess deficit for public finances and debt, or, and to what extent, to meet the Lisbon objectives i.e. the development objectives of economic policies. "We have endeavoured to consider the development orientation to the extent that public finance stability allowed us to do so," emphasised Prime Minister Pahor, adding that the new programme budget constitutes a tool for better interconnection of goals and concrete measures within particular policies and should therefore result in higher efficiency. "The proposed 2010 and 2011 budget breakdowns thus pool the existing strategies within the framework of a number of development policies and priorities: promoting entrepreneurship and competitiveness, higher education, science, technology and the information society, the labour market, education, culture and sport, transport and transport infrastructure, energy, agriculture, forestry, fisheries and food, social security and healthcare, and national security, defence and foreign affairs.
At the close of the session, Prime Minister Pahor emphasised that preparation of the development-oriented budget was accompanied by discussions on anti-crisis and structural measures. "Structural adjustments in the next two years will be carried out in the following four areas: necessary adjustments in the management of public institutions, promotion of entrepreneurship, competitiveness and labour-market transparency, adjustments in transport and energy infrastructure providing effective environmental and climate policy, and the adjustment of the social security and health-care systems."