According to the latest report by the Hungarian Central Statistical Office (KSH), last year’s deficit-to-GDP ratio fell to two percent, a significant 0.4 percent lower than the government’s goal of 2.4 percent.
KSH also reported that in 2017 the government spent 17.75 trillion HUF (57 billion EUR) and registered 17 trillion HUF in revenues.
Following Socialist mismanagement between 2002 and 2010 that brought Hungary to the brink of bankruptcy, the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán put the country’s economy back on a positive trajectory. Putting the latest deficit figure in context, prior to 2010 under the previous government, the deficit-to-GDP ratio ranged from five to nine percent.
Hungary became a member of the EU in 2004 and became a constant fixture in the European Union’s budgetary control mechanism, a punitive process called the excessive deficit procedure. Since 2013, thanks to stable economic growth and cuts in government expenditure, Hungary has managed to keep its deficit-to-GDP rate well below the three percent prescribed by the European Union and finally had the excessive deficit procedure lifted.