Kiss: Coalition's Growth Measures Weak, Incomplete and Overdue

Bratislava, 12 May (TASR) - Measures to support economic growth, which the governing coalition has only just started discussing, don't constitute any kind of reform package but are a list of minor fixes to the government's own mistakes instead, said opposition Progressive Slovakia (PS) MP Stefan Kiss at a press conference on Tuesday. According to Kiss, the party has obtained a list of measures that haven't yet been drafted into legislative form. "It's a long list of measures that they are only beginning to negotiate. It's been more than three months since they announced them, and almost three years during which they could have implemented them, but they've mostly done the opposite. And now they're starting to talk about a list of measures that I would describe as weak, incomplete and coming too late," said Kiss, who divided the measures into three categories. "The first category consists of foolish or unnecessary measures that either help a privileged few, distort the business environment, or both, and in reality have nothing to do with economic growth," the opposition MP warned. Among such measures, he cited the introduction of a new tool for preparing public-private partnership (PPP) projects, so-called institutional PPPs. These would involve agreements on future projects that are still under preparation, but which the government allegedly wants to allocate in advance to companies linked to itself. Another such measure would be extensive checks of cash register receipts. Energy price relief for selected large companies is also being prepared. "Electricity certainly is expensive, but why should a handful of companies that have arranged such deals receive injections from the state budget while the rest of us pay for it?" asked Kiss. The second category consists of measures that PS has long advocated but the government has ignored, and even now there are too few of them. These include investments from the Modernisation Fund to reduce electricity prices via investments in the Slovak Electricity Transmission System (SEPS), the possibility of obtaining a trading licence from the age of 16, and simplifying the recognition of foreign education credentials. "Let's call them tiny steps that may help a little and will do no harm, but they are certainly incomplete," said the MP. The third category includes larger measures that could help but which the government is unlikely to implement because it won't find the necessary funding. "As for measures such as lower tax and levy burdens or accelerated depreciation of corporate investments, which we have also been calling for over the past three years, writing about in our Bang document and submitting in Parliament, they'll probably not manage those, either," said Kiss. He identified a special issue in the possible abolition of the transaction tax, which has recently been the subject of speculation. PS supports such a step, although there's a need to wait for a specific proposal, stated the opposition MP. Kiss also criticised the government for keeping the list of measures secret and for the fact that the proposals are still not publicly known. "These things shouldn't be prepared in secrecy. They should be discussed, and the public should know about them," he added. mf/df