PM: Public Sector Wage Bill Far Too High

Croatia’s Prime Minister, speaking in a live TV interview last night, said that the massive wage bill in the public sector was far too high and was to blame for a shortfall in this year’s budget.

The shortfall in the state budget is higher than planned, and in planning for 2013’s budget, we around two 2-3 billion kuna (350 million euros) short, said Milanovic, adding that they were preparing for a technical rebalance.

Milanovic said that the 250,000 workers in the public sector was far too high but that his government would do all it could to keep jobs safe. Outside of the world of these 250,000 people working in the administration who are completely safe and secure, there is another world, the ‘real’ world. It is high time that we acted rationally and customised, we are in an extraordinary situation.

Milanovic believes that the total deficit will be reduced from 15-odd billion kuna (2 billion euros) last year, to around 10 million kuna (1.4 billion euros) this year.