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In an interview to LETA, Vilks said that this year's budget is being fulfilled a bit better than planned, and that the budget plan for this year will be accomplished as planned and maybe even better. The aim of this year's budget deficit is 0.9% of GDP.

The finance minister believes that the budget must continue to be planned without allowing a deficit which is too large, which could damage Latvia's reputation.

''If Latvia exits next year with a two to 3% budget deficit, then we must understand what this will do to our debt, as well as our reputation,'' said Vilks. Asked at what level the budget deficit should be maintained, Vilks said that it should be below 1%.

The finance minister did not predict how much additional financing will be found for ministry requests.

''However, we must find additional financing for defense next year. We have a plan set how we will go about doing this. The big unknown is the health care sector, where we also must try to find additional financing,'' he said. ''When we are seeing war at our borders, we cannot go about doing things like we have the past years. There is not enough money to meet all the ministry requests. I am not saying we should go through another round of consolidation, but we must all understand that we must slow down our resource ambitions,'' the finance minister said.