Budget, Estonia, Financial Services, Legislation

The ministers agreed upon a budget that has revenues of 7.3 and expenditures of 7.6 billion euros. The figures were revealed last Friday after the government had completed budget talks that had lasted for several weeks.

Finance ministry spokesman Rainer Laurits said that the budget volume growth is the result of changes in bookkeeping principles – namely the budget was changed so that it lists transferrable taxes and payments that earlier were not reflected in the state budget. These are land tax, income tax, a part of environmental fees to local municipality units, unemployment insurance tax to Unemployment Insurance Fund and savings pension payment to the registry keeper. The total sum of these taxes is 1.03 billion euros.

"Thus the 2013 budget plan has in it all means that the state collects, mediates or uses. The aim of the change is to get a better overview of revenues that the state collects and the financial volume of transfers," said Laurits.

Finance minister Jürgen Ligi said that the 2013 state budget volume was also increased by the decision to raise the wage funds of administrative spheres of all ministries by 4.4% or 29.2 million euros.