BRIEF NEWS BULLETIN IN ENGLISH NO. 3553 HINA ZAGREB, MARCH 4

HR-BUDGET-Politika BRIEF NEWS BULLETIN IN ENGLISH NO. 3553 HINA ZAGREB, MARCH 4 GOVERNMENT ADOPTS BUDGET ZAGREB, March 4 (Hina) - The Croatian Government on Saturday adopted a draft budget for this year, planned with 48.3 billion kuna (about US$6.2 billion). The draft budget envisages the payback of at least 3.6 billion kuna (about US$1 billion) of state debt. The budget also includes a reduction in salaries for users of the government budget by five per cent, Prime Minister Ivica Racan said after the Government's closed session. "In drafting the budget the Government had to start off from the difficult situation and count on only what we have," Racan said. This year's budget will nominally be one to two per cent lesser than last year's, but the reduction is realistically significantly greater when taken into consideration the fact that the budget will be taking on the payback of debt, Racan said. The planned amount of 48.3 billion kuna is the expenditure side of it. In the consolidate