Hungary meets EU budget deficit target for last year
Hungary, which has the European Union's widest budget deficit, said it met last year's revised target and expects the January shortfall to be narrower than a year earlier.
Hungary said the final full-year 2006 deficit was Ft 2.04 trillion (euro 8 billion), matching the target and higher than a first estimate of Ft 2.03 trillion, the Finance Ministry said. The forecast for this month's gap is Ft 224.6 billion, compared with Ft 332.8 billion in December. Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány raised taxes, regulated energy and drug prices and trimmed government jobs to shrink the deficit.
Hungary's plan to adopt the euro, submitted to the European Commission on September 1, forecasts the deficit by EU standards to drop to 3.2% of GDP by 2009. „Measures in late summer and in the fall of last year are beginning to bear fruit and the first results are visible,” said State Secretary Miklós Tátrai at a briefing in Budapest today.
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