Thanks to the work of the last ten years, despite the crisis caused by the epidemic, the Hungarian economy is resilient, the fundamentals - public finances, inflation, growth, trade balance and interest rates - have remained stable - said Árpád Kovács, President of the Budget Council (KT) on Kossuth Rádió Good Morning Hungary! in his show.
He noted: the deficit in proportion to GDP of the public finances will gradually return to the level below 3 percent, this year it could still be around 7.5 percent.
The state debt may begin to decrease in 2021, but it will take another 4-5 years to reach the state at the end of 2019, he added.
Árpád Kovács emphasized that his forecasts are based on his own opinion, and the KT will discuss the course of last year's and this year's budgets in mid-April. He did not rule out the possibility that the economy would grow faster this year, but according to him, he would be "happy" with a 3.5 percent increase as well.
The President of the KT also spoke about the fact that the indebtedness before 2010 is largely different from the present; then "permanent overspending" caused the GDP ratio to run away, but now defense costs have increased the ratio.
Saving human lives is much more important than numbers that look good on paper, he underlined, referring to the need to rebuild the economy's reserves.
MTI
