Economic and State Budgetary Perspectives 2009

Abstract

Our objective this year cannot be other than maintaining the ability of the economy to function by moderating the impacts of the global economic crisis, retaining the equilibrium of the state budget and thus keeping the socio-economic tensions between tolerable limits. It will be a considerable achievement to attain all this. If not, either a sustainable long-term economic policy
or a modernisation of the state budget is inconceivable.

In the paper the author summarises his thoughts concerning the interpretations of competitiveness and good governance, then in its context the risks of implementing the Hungarian state finance and the budget for 2009 (the risks that perhaps have not come to the foreground) and finally his ideas concerning the relevant new tasks in financial controlling.
All over the world various fiscal rules have been applied for shorter or longer periods and with more or less success due to the insecurity of the equilibrium. The tools of fiscal regulation include that there is a professional system, auditing office, research institute or budget office independent of the government and performing macro-economic analyses operating. Similarly,
the system of implements can also comprise a politically balanced body, a ‘council’ consisting of a small number of professionally creditable and independent persons reporting to the government and giving its expert opinion on the sustainability of the budget and related issues.
A rule-based budget can contribute to the success of stabilisation and the unfolding of development facilitating convergence if fiscal rules are implemented not on a basis of external obligation, but on the grounds of decisions resting on internal consensus. This will allow basically expenditure-side amendments to prevail through several cycles.
The responsibility of the auditing office is fundamentally manifested in its work being creditable and acknowledged under the changing integration and globalisation conditions. Therefore it has to be able to embrace the new procedure and methodology, and particularly strategic and involvement conditions that represent international trends today. The realisation of these two tasks, i.e. undertaking strategic involvement and the application of new methods, supposes and requires the widening of democracy in public life.