KDH: State Expenditure Cuts Necessary Next Step to Keep Consolidation Going

Bratislava, February 26 (TASR) - The consolidation of public finances is currently focused on the income side and thus impacts mostly common people, families, companies and employers, but cuts to government expenditure will become necessary this year too, particularly savings in the government spending and slashes in the number of public sector employees, Martin Stuk of opposition's KDH announced at a press conference on Wednesday. "Expenditure cuts will become the salient issue this year and it'll certainly be a challenge. We understand that previously expenditure was treated in debates as a holy cow that cannot be touched. But that's not actually the case because if we wish to see any further successful consolidation, we need to look at the expenditure side as well. There's no more income to be squeezed out, either from the people or businesses," said Stuk. Stuk believes that the state administration should be streamlined to operate more efficiently with a lower number of employees. He pointed out in this context that out of all Visegrad Four (V4: Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia) countries, Slovakia had the highest public administration costs in 2023. The Christian Democrats propose to carry out an audit of licenses and software used by the public administration bodies, sell surplus state property, tax gambling and make the collection of VAT tax more efficient. They also pointed to low efficiency in the drawing of EU funds. According to KDH, such measures would net €681-857 million. "That's precisely the number that Mr. [Finance Minister Ladislav] Kamenicky seeks as his consolidation target, when he talks about saving €800 million on the side of expenditure as part of the consolidation." mf/mcs