Commenting on the Budget Rebalancing Plan, Željko Lovrinčević, economic advisor to Jadranka Kosor, stated that the Government had to cut, not increase expenditures, and that there needed to be a stronger restraint on the budget deficit, and thus on borrowing.
– We will have to face this problem sooner or later, and the later we do it, the bigger it will become, Lovrinčević told us. When asked if there was anything in the rebalancing that he considered good, he said that his »best part is the freezing of budget spending in the next and 2012 year at the level of this year’s spending«. He believes that this will be difficult to achieve because the next Government, whoever forms it, will likely be a coalition that includes pensioners, and they will demand more money, in addition to the rising one-time costs of entering the European Union. When asked if he would continue to be a government advisor, Lovrinčević replied that his condition is a budget deficit of four percent and freezing expenditures in the next year. He did not further comment on the fact that one of those conditions has already been violated, namely that the deficit is 4.2 percent of GDP. (www.novilist.hr)
