Budget, Latvia, Markets and Companies

The Chancellery explained that in line with Article 75 of the Constitution, if the parliament decides on urgency of the bill with at least two thirds of the votes, the president may not return the bill to the parliament for revision.

The parliament adopted the legislative amendments on December 6.

The Finance Ministry had proposed changing the rules for a temporary budget, namely, scraping the rule that budget expenditure in January may not exceed one-twelfth of the previous budget's expenditure. Instead, the ministry proposes to stipulate that in the absence of the 2019 budget, next year’s budget expenditure cannot exceed the expenditure planned for the respective year in Latvia’s medium-term budget framework.

There are several urgent matters that need to be solved at the beginning of next year - increasing pensions and benefits, teachers' salaries and others - which will require additional funds, therefore the temporary budget will have to be structured differently.

Additional EUR 10.36 mln will be necessary to increase pensions and benefits next year, raising teachers' salaries will require EUR 17.58 mln, additional EUR 8.87 mln is needed to increase judges and prosecutors' salaries, and EUR 16.09 mln to ensure overtime pay for healthcare workers.