Parliament committee approves 2001 budget with cuts worth zl. 450 million

Parliament’s public finance committee approved the government ‘s 2001 budget draft on Friday, indicating that the bill was likely to be passed in a vote due in early February. Committee chief Miroslaw Sekula told Reuters that the body had backed a recent government amendment to the draft that increased the budget’s planned broad economic deficit to 1.8% of GDP from 1.6%. The committee decreased budget spending by zl.450 million from zl.181.6 billion through such cuts as zl.200 million for domestic debt servicing. The money would be spent in other fields including municipal education, police and unemployment. Parliament’s failure to approve the budget draft would most likely prompt President Aleksander Kwacniewski to dissolve the legislature and bring forward Parliamentary elections to May. (Reuters, Prawo i Gospodarka, Jan. 20-21, pp.1,3) M.M.