As part of our Christmas promotion, the Portfolio’s annual Signature subscription can be purchased with a 33% discount. More details by clicking here.
–
The government promulgated an interesting decree in the Hungarian Gazette published on Tuesday evening, entitled “Government Decree 814/2021 (XII. 28.) on the different rules of the central budget of Hungary in 2022 related to the emergency situation”.
In this, we have identified three particularly interesting elements, all of which affect the 2022 budget.
On the one hand, the government announces that the budget savings resulting from the lower social contribution tax to be paid next year on public employees employed by budgetary bodies are to be paid by the governing bodies to a central state treasury account. The amount is not named by the government decision, but with this, the government will achieve further budget savings next year on paper, and according to the announcements of recent days, it will need it if it wants to carve out the 2022 deficit better than planned.
The second important point of the decree is that without the obligation to modify the appropriations, an expense can be made with the approval of the Government to prevent and reduce the unfavorable economic consequences of the increase in energy prices. for the purpose of increasing public wealth, provided that this excess also leads to a reduction in the government debt ratio in 2022. ” That is, the government is preparing to further rewrite the 2022 budget with its unique emergency regulations.
The third, and in our assessment, the most important element of the regulation is the following one sentence:
The Áht. The individual resolution specified in Section 29 (1) shall not be issued by the Government in 2021.
The Public Finance Act quoted above paragraph it say it (Since the end of 2017) that “By 31 December, the Government shall establish in a separate resolution the budget revenues and budget expenditures of the central budget, broken down by chapters set out in the Central Budget Act, and the budget balance and government debt for three years after the budget year. planned amount “.
So, with a decision released on Tuesday, the government has decided not to publish its fiscal outlook for 2022-2024, its detailed and updated plans for revenue and expenditure lines. Incidentally, he did the same with his government decision of 22 December 2020, so this decision required by law did not appear even then, but the on the last day of last year Macro-fiscal analysis by the Ministry of Finance for the next 3 years.
So the official budget forecast document, which is expected to be missed again this year, will not help the transparency of the 2022 budget. About that before we reportedthat next year’s budget processes are completely opaque. The government has been in charge of the 2022 budget voted in the summer of 2021 made countless new economic policy decisions (it is enough to think, for example, of a PIT refund or a lump-sum payment of a 13-month pension), most recently a HUF 755 billion budget adjustment announced by the government and that it was lower than originally planned, 4.9% deficit target fire out next year. However, the impact of these decisions has not yet been publicly communicated by the government and does not appear to be addressed in a document available to the general public. This will also make it difficult to assess the real performance of the budget next year.
It is also worth emphasizing that three weeks ago the government 350 billion forints announced an investment freeze covering the year 2021. In total, the government decided on 350 + 755, or HUF 1105 billion, balance-improving measures in a few days. However, their budgetary impact cannot be accurately monitored.
We have written about the latest decisions concerning the 2022 budget in several of our articles:
Cover image: The 2022 Budget Bill will be tabled in Parliament on 4 May 2021. Source: MTI / Tibor Illyés
–
