Orbán cabinet confirms deficit at 110 pc of full-year target by end of September

Hungary’s cash flow-based budget, excluding local councils, ran a 1,496.5 billion forints (EUR 4.6bn) deficit at the end of September, the finance ministry confirmed in a second reading on Thursday.

The deficit reached 110 percent of the 1,360.7 billion forint full-year target.

The central budget deficit reached 1,542.9 billion forints, while separate state funds had a 24.4 billion surplus and social insurance funds a 22.0 billion forints surplus.

In September alone, the general government had a surplus of 149.8 billion forints, which by and large equalled the sums transferred by the European Commission to the Hungarian central budget that month, the ministry said.

The government continues to project the full-year ESA deficit at 2.4 percent of GDP as targeted and economic growth over 4 percent, the ministry said.

As a result of economic performance budget revenues increase, and ensure the stability of the general government parallel with delivering social goals as well as the financing of domestic and EU developments, it said.