Zagreb - Finance Minister Marko Primorac informed the parliament on Thursday that the government would revise the budget one more time by the end of this year and that it would also prepare one more aid package for vulnerable households.
We are preparing primarily one more revision as we have funds collected from the windfall tax which we promised to redistribute to the citizens in need, the minister told the Sabor as he presented the draft 2023 budget revision which the government unveiled last Friday.
Primorac said that over €230 million had been collected from the one-off excess profit tax , and some of those funds have already been tapped for aid schemes for vulnerable categories of citizens, while the rest will be used in the newest package that will be prepared by the year's end.
Primorac informed lawmakers that Croatia passed through the recent crises most fittingly and smoothly according to some surveys.
We are coping with the (coronavirus and energy) crises' effects, inflation is conspicuous, however it is also present in other countries and they have passed through the crises in different ways, some have had targeted measures and some have had global aid schemes, he said.
In 2022, Croatia's economy grew at the rate of 6.3%, twice as high as the average EU growth, and in 2023, the growth is set to decelerate to 2.2%, and again it will be two times higher than the expected growth in the EU, said the minister.
The inflation rate in Croatia is to slow down from 10.8% in 2022 to 6.6% this year.
On 19 May, the Plenković cabinet formulated a budget revision proposal for 2023, with revenue amounting to €26.6 billion, an increase of €1.7 billion, and expenditure amounting to €28.1 billion, an increase of €1.4 billion.
The budget deficit is expected to amount to €510 million or 0.7% of GDP according to the ESA methodology.
The government forecasts that the public debt to GDP ratio in 2023 will drop by 5.8 percentage points from 2022 to 62.6% of GDP.