The ESA deficit of the general government budget has turned out to be lower than the initially expected 2.4 percent. The deficit is seen to be some 2 percent for the year 2017, while the ratio of general government debt continued to decrease, by 1.5 percentage points, Minister of State for Public Finances Péter Benő Banai said at a recent press conference in Budapest, commenting on the latest fiscal data of the year 2017 released by the Ministry for National Economy.

According to preliminary cash-flow data, the deficit of the central government sector of the state budget totalled HUF 1973.9bn in the year 2017.

Within that, the central budget and Social Security Funds closed the period with deficits of HUF 1904.2bn and HUF 142.2bn, respectively, while Extra-Budgetary State Funds posted a surplus of HUF 72.5bn.

In the final month of the year, the central sub sector had a deficit of HUF 334.9bn.

(Ministry for National Economy)