2024-03-26 19:17:30
With unchanged policy, the budget deficit for all public authorities will reach 6.3% of GDP in 2029, or 44.8 billion euros. This figure appears in the Monitoring Committee’s updated estimates for 2025-2029, made public on Tuesday. This is an “important warning”, when we “already knew that the next legislature would be difficult on a budgetary level”, reacted the same day the Secretary of State for the Budget Alexia Bertrand (Open Vld).
Another message that the Liberal underlines in the latest report of the Monitoring Committee: the federal government is, according to her, on the right track in its “journey to clean up public finances”. For Entity I, which includes the federal administration and Social Security, the Monitoring Committee forecasts a budget deficit of 2.9% of GDP for 2024 (and 5.7% five years later). This is “in accordance with the commitments made to Europe”, indicates the Secretary of State.
Also read Alexia Bertrand: “We will have to find between 5 and 6 billion euros each year”
For the federal government and the federated entities taken together, the expected deficit this year is 4.4% of GDP, a slightly better result than previous forecasts from the Planning Office and the European Commission. The debt rate would reach 105.9% of GDP, and 118.9% in 2029.
The common budget deficit, by 2029, serves as an “important warning” for Alexia Bertrand. The lion’s share of this deficit is linked to the federal government. The increase in the social security deficit is partly to blame, for 7 billion, notes Alexia Bertrand, but also that of interest charges and primary expenditure.
“The time for gifts and electoral balloons has really passed,” concludes the liberal, who predicts that the budget will be, “rightly”, one of the central subjects of the electoral campaign in view of June 9. “We cannot waste time following” the elections, because we will “quickly” need a “strong” government, she already predicts.
Also read Alexia Bertrand (Open VLD): “We will have to sell Belfius, BNP Paribas, then Ethias”
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