Filenews 21 September 2023
The state budget for 2024 will have three characteristics, the first of the Nikos Christodoulides government, which is submitted next week to the Council of Ministers for approval, Finance Minister Makis Keravnos said.
Amid the global slowdown due to rising interest rates and ongoing uncertainty, the Finance Minister underlined that the next state budget will be significantly growth-oriented in order to ensure growth prospects, will aim to contain employment and wage bills in the public sector and will be in surplus, ensuring compliance with Cyprus' European obligations. He sent a message to everyone to keep the economy "on those rails that will lead us to adventures".
The next budget, Mr. Keravnos said, "will be significantly growth-oriented, promoting projects that have been incorporated into the national Recovery and Resilience Plan, the second feature is the containment of the wage bill and employment in the public sector, which has risen to a relatively excessive level, and the third characteristic is that it will be in surplus, in order to ensure the sustainable development of the economy and our response to the our European obligations".
In relation to the revised economic forecasts, the Finance Minister said that for 2023 the estimate is that there will be a marginal downward revision of the growth rate, which now stands at 2.6% from the initial 2.8% of GDP, while for 2024 the estimate foresees an acceleration of growth that will reach around 2.9%.
However, Keravnos expressed hope that "there will be no unexpected events and external factors".
"Because the degree of uncertainty is high on the global and European stage," he said, adding that the EU economy was already sliding into a recessionary phase.
In this context, Mr. Keravnos stressed that through the budget, "the effort is to respond to the uncertainty that exists and the challenges that exist before us in order to ensure the continuation of growth."
Keravnos said that the application for the disbursement of the second and third tranches under the Recovery and Resilience Plan will be submitted by the end of the year.
Asked about the message he would like to send on the occasion of the submission of the budget, Mr. Keravnos said that "my message is that we all need to operate productively, increase our productivity and efficiency, nor in order to have good and important results, while preserving the course of our economy on those rails that will not lead us to adventures."
CNA
