ZAGREB, Dec 7 (Hina) - The Croatian parliament adopted the state budget for 2003 in the amount of 87.6 billion kuna (EUR11.84 billion) just after midnight on Friday.
ZAGREB, Dec 7 (Hina) - The Croatian parliament adopted the state
budget for 2003 in the amount of 87.6 billion kuna (EUR11.84
billion) just after midnight on Friday. #L#
Parliament adopted the state's most important annual financial
document after a marathon voting on some 450 amendments worth
almost three billion kuna (EUR405.4 million) which had been moved
to the draft budget.
The 2003 budget was adopted with 78 votes in favour and 12 against.
The government did not adopt any one amendment in its entirety, with
the exception of the one moved by Marijana Petir of the Croatian
Peasants' Party to increase by one million kuna funds for the Bureau
for the Protection of Nature.
The ministers said, however, that the government did adopt parts of
some amendments in a variety of ways.
The government's rejection of the MPs' amendments angered those who
had moved them. Damir Kajin of the Istrian Democratic Assembly at
one moment said he had never experienced such a frustrating
situation.
Kajin, whose party had submitted the highest number of amendments
to the draft budget, 97, said the previous governments had adopted
at least some amendments moved by the opposition.
Vesna Skare-Ozbolt of the Democratic Centre had moved the heaviest
amendments weighing at almost 2.5 billion kuna.
The voting on the 2003 budget passed with claims from the opposition
that neither parliament nor the government but the International
Monetary Fund was the decision-maker for the budget, that the
budget was in the function of elections, and that taxpayers' money
was spent inappropriately, for example on the expensive
refurbishment of ministry offices, intellectual services,
official trips, etc.
The government's amendments to the draft budget, which parliament
approved, cut the final budget by 203 million kuna, reducing the
state's deficit to five percent of the Gross Domestic Product, the
borderline to increasing the state's indebtedness.
The budget's priorities in 2003 are science and education and the
continuation or reforms in the judiciary and agriculture.
(EUR1 = 7.4 kuna)
(hina) ha