In the lastest report on implementation of the Public Sector Optimisation Plan, Ministry of Public Administration, striving to come up with positive effects of the Optimisation Plan, claims that there has been an impact on public spending. It uses the share of gross salaries in the public sector in the GDP structure, concluding that “a conservative approach to further employment growth on this basis at the central level” is evident.
However, if we use a far more precise indicator and look at the share of gross salaries in the state budget, we can conclude that it has been steadily growing each year (2016 – 442 million; 2017 – 445 million; 2018 – 459.8 million; plan for 2019 – 472 million euros).
During 2018, initially planned funds for gross salaries have been increased for 22.8 million by amending the budget. In other words, during the first year of the implementation of the Optimisation Plan, planned amount for gross salaries at the central level had been increased over the year for more than 5%.
Furthermore, the enacted budget for 2019 has introduced an increase of gross salaries by 10 million euros in comparison to the amended sum in 2018 (472 mil. in 2019 in comparison to the 461 mil. after the rebalance in 2018).
Although we do not have final year-end budget report for 2018, if we look into GDDS Reports of the Government that are submitted to the IMF, we can see that 495.8 million euros were spent for gross salaries at the national level. A closer look at the monthly dynamics of spending reveals that in the second half of the year, when the implementation of the Plan started, 5 million euros more were spent than in the first half of the year.
