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The government issued an interesting decree in the Hungarian Gazette published on Tuesday evening, titled “Government Decree 814/2021 (XII. 28.) on the various rules for Hungary’s central budget in 2022 in connection with the state of emergency.”
In this, we’ve identified three particularly interesting elements, all of which impact the 2022 budget.
On the one hand, the government declares that the budget savings resulting from the reduction of the social contribution tax that will be paid next year on public servants appointed by the budget bodies will be paid by the governing bodies to the account of the central state treasury. The amount is not mentioned in the government’s decision, but with this the government will achieve additional budget savings next year on paper, and according to recent days’ announcements, it will need it if it wants to cut the 2022 deficit better than planned.
The second important point of the decree is that without the obligation to adjust the appropriations, expenditure can be made with the consent 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 surplus will also lead to a decrease in the proportion of government debt in 2022.” That is, the government It is preparing to rewrite the 2022 budget with its own unique emergency regulations.
The third and most important element from our point of view in organizing is the following single sentence:
The Áht. The individual decision specified in Section 29 (1) will not be issued by the Government in 2021.
The Public Finance Law referred to above, a paragraph thereof say it (Since the end of 2017) that “by December 31, the government shall determine in a separate decision budget revenues and budget expenditures for the central budget, divided by the chapters provided for in the Central Budget Law, the budget budget and government debts for three years after the budget year The planned amount.”
Therefore, the government decided, with its decision issued on Tuesday, not to publish its financial forecasts for 2022-2024, and its detailed and updated plans for revenue and expenditure items. He did the same with his government’s decision on December 22, 2020, so this legal decision was not published either, but the Ministry of Finance’s overall financial analysis for the next three years was published on the last day of last year.
So the official budget forecast document, which is expected to be missed again this year, will not help with the transparency of the 2022 budget. We previously reported that next year’s budget processes are quite opaque. Since the adoption of the 2022 budget voted in the summer of 2021, the government has made several NEP decisions (just consider income tax refund or 13-month pension payment), and recently announced a budget adjustment of HUF 755 billion. The government has set a lower deficit target of 4.9% next year than originally planned. However, the impact of these decisions has not yet been announced by the government and does not appear to be addressed in a document available to the general public. This will make it difficult to assess the true performance of the budget next year.
It is also worth noting that three weeks ago, the government announced a freeze on investment of HUF 350 billion, which covers 2021. In total, the government decided to make 350 + 755, or HUF 1105 billion, of balance improvement measures in a few days. However, its impact on the budget cannot be accurately monitored.
We’ve written about the latest decisions regarding the 2022 budget in several of our articles:
Cover photo: The 2022 budget bill will be presented to Parliament on May 4, 2021. Source: MTI / Tibor Illyés
