I dare to write that the health financing situation is becoming increasingly muddled. With all three health insurance companies (allegedly) starting to cut their losses, the problem of financing Slovak healthcare has moved up a notch. Of course, it is too early to be scared, but from a systemic point of view, any future financial problems of the health insurance companies would be much more serious than the financial problems of the hospitals.
The current social package worth more than a billion euro has definitively confirmed that Slovak government is going kamikaze in the area of public finances. After all, the money is “lying on the pavement”.
Of course, everyone would be delighted if the supermarkets were full of quality Slovak fruit, vegetables, meat, and other products. However, this ideal cannot be achieved by a policy of self-sufficiency, but by a policy of cooperation.
The EU Commission’s (EC) spring forecast, demonstrating the expected real growth for 2022 and 2023 was published exactly a day before the preliminary data for growth in the first quarter of 2022.
The growing energy costs play an important role for the increase of the overall consumer price indices during the last couple months and threatens a maintenance of high inflation rates during the entire 2022.
The conclusions of the ECB’s report is that establishing an environment that favors a steady convergence requires policies aiming at economic stability, as well as wide structural reforms. This statement holds regardless of whether we will adopt the Euro or not.
The need for comprehensive information on the economic situation is important for economic policy during the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, which led to the seizure of Ukrainian territories, terror against civilians, and destruction of industrial facilities and infrastructure in Ukraine.
The directive imposing a pan-EU 15 percent minimum effective corporate income tax on large companies, would, according to the European Commission, address tax challenges caused by digitalization and ensure that companies pay “their fair share of tax.”
One of the debates which has intensified recently is to what extent is lax monetary policy causing the increase in the price inflation.
The 20th anniversary of the euro was marked by an increase in price inflation. In the euro area, annual consumer price inflation reached 5% in December 2021. Lithuania recorded the highest rate of 11%.
