KDH Urges Gov't to Start Saving on Itself and Straight Away

Bratislava, September 27 (TASR) - It's necessary to consolidate public finances, but not in the way currently proposed by the government, which should start saving on itself and as early as this year, representatives of the opposition Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) stated at a press conference on Friday. "According to our calculations, if the state administration saved 10 percent of its expenditure, which is possible, that's no problem, then we're talking about some €400 million. That sum is about half of what this government intends to collect from all citizens in VAT tax alone," claimed MP Jozef Hajko. He added that all it would take is a single government resolution to bind individual ministries to make such austerity cuts. KDH expert on public administration Martin Stuk pointed out that individual ministries have various reserves in their budgets that must be put to use in this situation. In his view, money can be saved on expenditure on goods and services, energy, software licences, public procurement centralisation and external services downsizing. However, there has been absolutely no discussion about austerity cuts on the part of the government. "All we've been hearing is just that the state will want to collect an additional €2.7 billion from the inhabitants, entrepreneurs, employers and employees, out of which 60 percent is to be borne directly by the people, 35 percent by businesses and that, of course, means the people because businesses will translate the spike into their prices and only a paltry 5 percent is to be saved up by the state," added Stuk. mf/mcs