Today parliament gave its approval to next year’s budget, which will see the deficit drop from EUR 4.54 billion to EUR 3.81 billion, thanks to projected receipts worth EUR 13.15 billion and expenditures of EUR 16.96 billion in 2011.
The budget received the support of 78 MPs from 147 in attendance, which seems to point once again to the coalition pushing through its will on its own steam, as all opposition MPs voted against the budget. They had proposed seven amendments, but the government did not incorporate any of them into the final draft.
Compared to the original draft, the deficit was cut by around EUR 200 million, thanks to some EUR 96 million in additional taxes put on emission sales recently by finance minister Ivan Miklos. The Ministry of Transport (controlled by KDH) had its allocation slashed by just over EUR 8.2 million as punishment to compensate for the outage in excise tax on beer caused by KDH MPs not voting in favour of increasing the excise tax on this most popular drink.