Prague, Sept 20 (CTK) – The opposition TOP 09 party will propose that the Czech centre-left government reduce the and expenditures and deficit of the next year’s state budget by 30 billion crowns, its leader Miroslav Kalousek told a press conference on Tuesday.
The government of the Social Democrats (CSSD), the ANO movement and the Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL) ought to submit the draft budget to the Chamber of Deputies by the end of the month. Finance Minister Andrej Babis (ANO) said on Tuesday he expects the government to approve the draft budget with a deficit of 60 billion on Wednesday.
In the first reading of the budget bill, the Chamber of Deputies will be passing the basic parameters – the expenditures and revenues of the budget, its deficit and the way of its settlement.
As the government coalition holds a comfortable majority in the lower house of parliament, the opposition has little chance of blocking the budget.
Kalousek said a responsible government would draft a balanced budget for 2017, but this would be impossible to do without making systemic changes to cut the mandatory expenditures.
He said the government of Bohuslav Sobotka (CSSD) only managed to cancel some previous reforms, but it did not introduce any new ones.
He said Sobotka’s government set the 2017 expenditures at 1211.7 billion crowns last year, but it proposed to increase this limit by 38.2 billion and the Chamber of Deputies recently approved it.
Kalousek said the draft state budget for next year has been one of the worst ones ever.
The government claims that investments are the priority, but it is the costs of the management of the state that are growing most steeply, Kalousek said. The real priorities are not investments or science and research, but the salaries of clerks, subsidies for non-business entities and welfare benefits, he added.
In the past weeks of the culminating campaign before the regional elections, the government approved pay rises for civil servants, doctors, nurses and teachers.
President Milos Zeman also said the politicians should more think about investments rather than giving election presents to voters as the economic boom will end one day.
Kalousek was finance minister in 2007-09 and 2010-13 and the right-wing governments took many austerity measures then in connection with the economic crisis. Mainly due to this, he has been one of the most unpopular politicians in the country.
