Opposition Proposes Close to 400 Amendments for 2014 Budget
A total of 403 amendments were proposed for the 2014 state budget as the deadline for submitting proposals passed yesterday.
The bulk of the proposals hailed from the opposition - 305 from the Social Democrats and 90 from the Center Party. But if last year is any indicator, the majority of those will amount to wasted paper, as the coalition parties then refused to accept any of 100 proposals.
Parliament's Finance Committee will begin poring through the amendments at their next session, on November 5, a press release said. The head of the committee stressed the need for sound budgeting, saying that all proposals must have a feasible funding source.
Parliament's plenary assembly will convene for the second reading of the budget bill on November 13.
The Cabinet sent the bill to Parliament in late September. Expenditure will grow 4.9 percent, to 8.06 billion euros, with allocations by area of governance increasing more or less across the board. Revenues will grow 4.3 percent, reaching 8 billion euros.
The government has planned for a nominal deficit of 0.4 percent and at the same time a structural surplus - leaving out cyclical, one-off and temporary factors - of 0.7 percent.