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Gütersloh / Magdeburg (dpa / sa) – According to a study, the cities, municipalities and districts in Saxony-Anhalt achieved surpluses last year despite the corona pandemic. The municipalities in the state would have received around 150 million euros more than spent in 2020, according to the Bertelsmann Foundation’s municipal financial report published on Tuesday.
The federal and state aid programs would have prevented people from slipping into a budget crisis. As examples, the authors of the study cite the assumption of trade tax losses by the federal government or the reimbursement of daycare contributions and other tax losses by the state. “This ensured planning security and the municipalities remained able to act in the pandemic.”
The authors warned that the tax revenues of the municipalities in Saxony-Anhalt are still low. “The almost nationwide low economic power is a mortgage for the future of the state,” said Kirsten Witte, municipal expert at the Bertelsmann Foundation in Gütersloh (North Rhine-Westphalia). Some of the least taxable municipalities in Germany can be found in Saxony-Anhalt. Only the Saalekreis reached the national average.
The foundation’s municipal experts continue to be critical of the high level of cash loans, which are to be understood as a kind of overdraft facility for the municipalities. In contrast to the national trend, these debts in Saxony-Anhalt hardly decreased despite the good economic situation before the crisis. One problem is above all the high cash loans from Halle, which made up a quarter of the nationwide volume. Magdeburg and Dessau-Roßlau, on the other hand, would have used the economically good years to reduce debt.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210706-99-272409 / 2
Source: DPA
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