The budget numbers are unrealistic and unpredictable, Vago said, adding that while the government is “chasing rainbows” with ambitious goals of creating 100,000 jobs, employment has dropped this year.

The health sector is in the most dire situation of all, and “it is simply going to be taken off the respirator next year,” he declared.

Socialist Imre Szekeres said in Parliament that real wages have fallen 4% since 2010, while tax burdens have risen 38%, inflation is above 5%, the economy is stagnating, investments have come to a standstill, bad loans are on the rise and 4 million Hungarians are living below the poverty line.

The budget does not address these problems, he added.

The health sector and local governments will lose the most in 2013, besides the man on the street, Szekeres said.

Declaring that the budget will cripple the country, Jobbik leader Gabor Vona described it as a true reflection of the cabinet’s distorted economic and social policies, which follow the Latin American model of helping the rich to maintain power while poverty grows and emigration increases.

Source: Hungary Around the Clock

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