Unexpected revenue gains in Hungary’s state pension fund could be used to offset a gap in the budget due to the axing of the residential property tax, business daily Napi Gazdasag said on Friday.
The government announced earlier this week that it is facing a 50-billion-forint (EUR 184.12m) budget shortfall due to a decision by the constitutional court to scrap the property tax introduced just at the start of the year, with retroactive effect.
Finance Minister Peter Oszko has cited as among the options for replacing the missing revenue earlier unbudgeted funds expected to flow in from large numbers of people moving back into the state pension system. The amount Oszko said he expected from pension contributions from members transferring over from private pension funds is about 30 billion forints. The 2010 budget did not account for any revenue from new state pension memberships, so this item is unexpected funds which can be used to finance the shortfall, the paper said.