Govt proposes €87.9b budget for 2024 with €11.5b deficit

The four-party alliance rightwing government on Monday published the proposed budget of 87.9 billion euros for the year 2024 with a deficit of 11.5 billion euros, said the Ministry of Finance in a press release.

The budget reflected the austerity measures announced earlier by the four-party alliance government in its programme.

The government earmarked to earn revenue of an estimated amount of 76.3 billion euros.

According to the proposal, the government will make cut in various sectors including social welfare, early childhood education, and services for refugees and asylum seekers.

The government, however, proposed to allocate more money in third level education, energy subsidies, and grants for arts and culture.

The proposed budget is 6.5 billion euros higher than the budget of 2023.

As a move of cutting costs, the Ministry of the Environment will face one of the biggest reductions and allocation will be reduced to 241 million euros, which was 357 million euros in the budget of 2023.

The cuts will stop various environmental initiatives taken by the previous government.