Kiss:Social Monsters Wouldn't Have Drafted Different Budget Than Fico's Gov't(2)

Bratislava, October 24 (TASR) - Even though the dominant parties of the governing coalition define themselves as social democratic, the 2025 public budget draft they submitted is anti-social and, from the long-term view, set to stifle the economy, economic expert and MP Stefan Kiss (Progressive Slovakia) told TASR TV in an interview on Thursday. Higher VAT tax will fuel inflation, start the spiral of growing prices and, together with the introduction of the transaction tax, slow down the economy. "In my view, social monsters wouldn't have drafted a different budget than this one," claimed Kiss. PS can envision a different consolidation model, one in which up to €1 billion would be covered by savings on the expenditure side and, hence, there would be no need to hike VAT in the first year at all. "In my view, half a billion could easily be saved with expenditure cuts. The other half a billion in expenditure could be found by applying the value for money principle to various inefficient subsidies and other items of state spending," said Kiss. If there had still been the necessity to increase VAT afterwards, it could have been much milder, for instance, an increase by 1 percent. Rather than introducing non-systemic cuts to VAT on selected items as this government has, PS would recommend a targeted social aid to the population strata in need. "If they had started to work on this a year ago, before they formed the government, within that first year the legislation, IT structure and all other processes could have been prepared already, so as to implement a meticulous targeted effect in social policy," said Kiss. The necessity of public finance consolidation was caused to a certain extent by objective factors during the 2020-23 crises. However, the consolidation might not have been so harsh, had the pre-2020 governments of Robert Fico prepared a financial cushion for later lean times. "The pandemic, war in Ukraine and energy crisis objectively put us into financial trouble, but we didn't have any reserves to fall back on. Because of that, unfortunately, the revival will be that much more painful," added Kiss. mf/mcs