Weekly press briefing about Paks, economy, Horthy statue and other topics

Budapest (MTI) – Concerning the planned upgrade of the Paks nuclear plant, the government office chief said on Thursday said that the Hungarian Debt Management Agency (AKK) would evaluate financing options every time it is presented with bills for the project.

The agency has been given the option to decide whether to settle outstanding charges related to the upgrade project using loans from the open market, funds from the budget or by drawing on a 10 billion euro credit line provided by the Russian state, János Lázár told a weekly press briefing.

Lázár noted that Hungary’s position on the financial market had improved since signing the loan agreement with Russia in June 2014.

The government’s economic cabinet asked for the opinion of AKK, the economy ministry and the Rothschild Group on replacing the Russian loan with financing from the market but decided to stick with the original contract as even an international consortium would struggle to provide 10 billion euros of financing with a 30 years maturity, Lázár said.

Up until March 6 this year, work costing around 100 million euros was completed. The Russian credit line has been available since April 29, and in the next twelve months around 600-900 million euros of work is expected to be carried out, Lázár added.

On the subject of next year’s budget, Lázár said that the bill would be on the agenda of the cabinet’s meeting on May 24, and parliament is expected to pass it into law before June 15. He said next year’s budget deficit was seen at 2.4 percent. “Hungary’s public finances are in order and this is a proof against allegations of corruption: if the funds had been stolen the budget would be empty,” he said.

District nurses will receive a monthly wage supplement of 33,000 forints from November and this will be paid throughout 2018, he said. Concurrently, preparations will be made for developing a national network of district maternity nurses, and the government wants the service to operate along common standards by 2018. He said that maternity nurses now employed by municipalities should be organised into a national service, and together with family doctors, should form “a pillar” of national health care.

He confirmed that wages of ambulance workers will increase by 10 percent from next year as part of the new career model in the sector. He added that while in 2010 the government had spent 22.5 billion forints on the ambulance service; next year’s spending will reach 39.7 billion forints.