2011 the worst year for taxes

Data from the Ministry of Finances show that this is the third month of this year, after April, when the government is collecting fewer taxes than one year ago.

But this time the plunge is deeper.  If in May and April the revenues fell with 0.4% and 4.4%, the plunge in September was 7.4%, maybe the highest in the history. Most of these revenues were collected from Excise, Tax on Personal Revenue and National Taxes.

Now that the first 9 months of 2011 are over, this can be confirmed as the worst year for the public finances in the last decade. In total, the revenues during this month have increased with only 1.1%, the lowest since 2001 and 5 times smaller than 2009, which is the second most difficult year for the country’s finances.

This situation, added to the debt in maximal levels has obliged the government to undertake extreme expense cuts, especially from the public investments. This September, the state invested in economy half of the money that was predicted in the budget. Compared to one year ago, the investments were 2.2 times lower.

The formula of managing public finances now has only one principle; every shortfall will be directly compensated with investment cuts. Until September, the yearly shortfall is 62 million USD. For compensating this, the government has taken 43 million from the public investments, which now have almost arrived in the level of 2008.

But if the revenues will continue to keep this pace for the next years, the education, health and other sectors will have more fund cuts.

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