Hungary’s conservative Fidesz party is preparing the ground for renegotiating terms with the IMF if they assume power after the April elections, Mihaly Varga, the party’s deputy leader and senior economic policymaker, said in a television interview.
Fidesz has met foreign investors and officials of the International Monetary Fund and further discussions will take place if the party wins the elections as it is expected to do, Varga, the party’s former finance minister, told public-service MTV in a Sunday interview.
Varga repeated Fidesz’s view that Hungary’s 2010 budget deficit would be substantially larger than the official target of 3.8 percent of gross domestic product. He said the budget failed to include certain items that could end up swelling the shortfall to 7.5 percent of GDP.
He said that the 7.5 percent figure did not account for any measures that Fidesz might take once in power.
In response, the ruling Socialist Party has asked Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai to clarify whether Fidesz had concluded a secret pact with the IMF about increasing the budget deficit, party spokesman Istvan Nyako told a news conference on Monday.
“We would like to know what conclusions Varga and the IMF officials arrived at in their meeting,” he said.