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Fico: Crisis Plan Can't Take Only Slovakia Into Account
Saturday 02 January 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, January 2 (TASR) - Slovakia will begin to consolidate its public finances already this year, due to favourable economic prognoses, Slovak Premier Robert Fico has told TASR in an interview.
If the economic problems recur again, the entire Europe will need to address this issue together, said Fico.
Because of the global crisis and the subsequent drop in budget revenues, the deficit of public finances in 2009 grew threefold compared to the original plan to 6.3 percent of GDP. According to Government's official consolidation plan, the deficit should fall to 5.5 percent of GDP in 2010 - at the time when the average deficit of public finances in Europe is estimated to increase from 7 to 7.5 percent GDP.
Fico said that the European Council has passed a conclusion that the public finances need to be consolidated in 2011 at the very latest, with the individual EU countries free to begin the process sooner if consolidation can be afforded. "We will begin sooner, because we are convinced that we can afford this," emphasised Fico.
When asked whether the Government has prepared any kind of crisis plan in case the economy and budget revenues don't develop according to estimates, Fico replied that the possible crisis wouldn't affect Slovakia only. "If Europe sees that the development of global crisis takes the form of the letter 'W', meaning that we're ascending up to the pinnacle of the first 'V' but there's another way down in store for us, then the whole Europe would sit down and pass another plan for economic reform. The plan would be based in particular on huge stimuli coming from the governmental budgets," said Fico.
According to him, Slovakia is anything but an isolated country acting in a non-standard way and in contradiction with the European plans and policies. "We've made all decisions in accordance with the consensus reached at the European Council's sessions. If another crisis situation emerges, it would most certainly be an European, global crisis and we would need to discuss the subsequent course of action with the entire Europe then," claimed Fico.
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