CIB Bank chief analyst György Barta called the Széll Kálmán plan “lukewarm”. The scale of the fiscal improvements, the plan’s focus on the expenditure side of the budget and structural measures to foster employment are “hot”, but the lack of detail was “cold” as is the risk of implementing the measures. Some measures could even cause budget spending to rise, he added.
The fiscal deficit targets and GDP growth targets in the plan appear overly ambitious, he said.
TakarékBank‘s Gergely Suppan said the most important message of the plan was government debt reduction, and its size in excess of expectations allows room for maneuver if measures are scaled back later. The lack of details was disappointing, he added.
The announced rollback of a planned reduction of the corporate tax is a sacrifice in the interest of reducing state debt but could benefit companies later as a possible fall in Hungary’s risk premium makes corporate financing cheaper, he said.
Zoltán Török of Raiffeisen Bank said the direction of the changes was right and important, even if the plan did not address the operation of the state and local governments.
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