MORNING NEWS HIGHLIGHTS - Monday, April 29, 2024 - 9 a.m.

TASR brings a quick morning overview of the most important events seen in Slovakia on the previous day (Sunday, April 28): BRATISLAVA - The Finance Ministry is entertaining an option to issue state bonds that could be procured directly by common people and this could be a win-win scenario, seeing as the people could take advantage of higher interest rates than those seen in banking accounts while selling the bonds this way would be more beneficial for the state in comparison to offering the bonds on financial markets, Finance Minister Ladislav Kamenicky (Smer-SD) said on RTVS's discussion programme 'O 5 minut 12' (Five Minutes to Twelve) on Sunday. According to Kamenicky, this could be one of the solutions to active privately-owned resources in support of the economy, as previously mentioned several times by Prime Minister Robert Fico (Smer-SD) already. "It'd be up to the people to decide whether they want an interest significantly higher than what they get with regular accounts," claimed Kamenicky, adding that the buying of such state bonds would be optional. He pointed out that the model has been successfully tried by several other countries. BRATISLAVA - If the general election had been held in April, Smer-SD would have won on 21.1 percent of votes, with Progressive Slovakia (PS) a runner-up on 19.7 percent of votes and Voice-SD in the third place with 18 percent, according to polls conducted by Focus agency on behalf of TV Markiza. SaS would have ended up fourth (7 percent), followed by KDH (6.9 percent), Republic (5.5 percent) and SNS (5.3 percent). Smer-SD would have acquired 38 parliamentary seats, PS 36, Voice-SD 33, SaS and KDH 12 each, Republic 10 and SNS 9. BRATISLAVA - The Government is not preparing any changes that would deprive the people of their savings in the second pension pillar and doesn't plan any further cuts to contributions they pay to this type of savings, Labour, Social Affairs and Family Minister Erik Tomas (Voice-SD) said on TA3's discussion programme 'V politike' (In Politics) on Sunday. Tomas said this in response to a claim by his opposite number, SaS chair Branislav Groehling, according to whom the Government is planning to take more money away from the second pillar. "There's no legislation in the pipes to that effect, not even to cut levies to the second pillar," said Tomas. He added that if the state wanted to borrow these savings for the construction of highways, it would have to be with reasonable yields. BRATISLAVA - Economic benefits of the EU membership are considerable for Slovakia, as the EU integration yields an additional wealth of €4,000 per an average citizen and about €16,000 per a four-member household over the span of five years, but one-third of this contribution to wealth depends on the efficiency of how the available resources are put to use in the economy, analysts of the Slovak Central Bank (NBS) stated in their study dedicated to the upcoming 20th anniversary of Slovakia's membership in the EU. Slovakia joined the EU on May 1, 2004. "The European Union is a fascinating project, I'm absolutely convinced of that. It was an honour for me to be involved a bit in it. More specifically, I was involved in our joining of the eurozone, which couldn't have happened without our accession to the EU. The euro and EU are not perfect, but what makes them so alluring is that we can all participate in making them better," NBS Governor Peter Kazimir told TASR. ko