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Pravda Daily on Saturday, May 22
Saturday 22 May 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Pravda daily wrote Saturday on page 12 about Slovakia's growing debts and attempts to not exceed the targeted foreign trade deficit of €3.7 billion. Analysts urge the country to retrench or see the gap in tax revenues rise further.
The country's Debt Management and Liquidity Agency has this year borrowed €4.5 billion via a bond issue, setting everyone back €830, its chief Daniel Bytcanek is reported as saying. His plans are to get €4 billion more this way to provide, among other things also this year for a loan for Greece.
As part of the European Union efforts to aid the financially strapped Greece from which lenders ask 30 percent interest rates p.a. Finance Minister Jan Pociatek has pledged a €816 million billion loan. Slovakia borrows for 3.75 rates a year in comparison.
Notwithstanding their annual pension rise and government-backed Christmas bonus, Slovak retirees are among the groups most at risk of poverty, who are dependent on the aid from their neighbours and loved ones, according to an article on page 8.
A case in point is a Bratislava senior resident named Ivan Pagac, 71, who gets €310 monthly pension, and has trouble making ends meet although he does not drink or smoke. Living in one-roomed flat costs him €110, town council lunches another €60 and €30 for insulin as diabetic.
It is argued the situation is bleak both in cities and the countryside. Food is no longer cheaper in rural areas as previously believed, for people in villages leave off keeping cattle as well as grow fewer crops in gardens.
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