Slovakia, unlike the Czech Republic, for example, will come out of the coronavirus crisis with a record level of debt according to the Budgetary Responsibility Council (RRZ) stating that previous governments had failed to prepare the debt for a period of crisis. "Each economic crisis writes out a bill for how public finances were managed during good times," wrote the Council on its social media profile, pointing to the period from 2013 up to 2020 as one such sunnier period. If governments had met their own budgetary targets during the good times and used the extra income to consolidate public finances, these public finances could have entered the current crisis with a debt almost 10 percentage points lower, stated RRZ.
"This is bad news not only in the event of a further crisis, but especially in view of the approaching burden of an ageing population, which will bring significant pressure to increase spending. In order to keep public finances sustainable, we need to go into that period with a low debt," added RRZ.
