Hungarian parliament approves 2020 budget

Lawmakers approved the 2020 budget on Friday with a vote of 127 for, 58 against and no abstentions.

The budget targets revenue of 21,426.0 billion forints and expenditures of 21,793.0 billion forints, producing a deficit of 367.0 billion forints.

The 2020 deficit target is less than half of the 998.4 billion forint target for 2019.

The budget targets a deficit of 1.0 percent of GDP, calculated according to the European Union’s accrual-based accounting methodology. The target is under the 1.5 percent-of-GDP target in Hungary’s updated Convergence Programme submitted to Brussels in April.

Hungary’s year-end public debt level, relative to GDP, is set to fall from 68.6 percent targeted for 2019 to 65.5 percent for 2020.

The Hungarian budget sets aside 488 billion forint in reserves, including 378 billion forints in the National Protection Fund, and 110 billion forints for “extraordinary government measures”, more than double the total of 225 billion forints of reserves in the 2019 budget.

The cost of debt maintenance targeted in the budget is 1,078.5 billion forints.

The budget assumes GDP growth of “around 4 percent” and consumer price inflation of 2.8 percent.

Speaking after the vote, Mihály Varga, the finance minister, said the budget’s adoption showed that the vast majority of lawmakers agreed to strengthening families, protecting economic achievements, maintaining the country’s security, and pursuing an economic policy based on tax cuts and wage increases. As he said before he set out the main goals of the 2020 budget, namely support for families and ensuring resources for the action plan to protect the economy, read more HERE.