Pre Budget 2018 opening financial position

The White Paper of Estimates for 2018 has been published.

It sets out the per-Budget opening position, before any changes made in the Budget.

https://www.rte.ie/news/2017/1007/910514-budget/

http://www.finance.gov.ie/updates/e...year-ending-31-december-2018-the-white-paper/

I may add more information later.

Note that a lot of spending increases are already decided.

For example, from www.rte.ie:

"The Government has indicated that it will pay a Christmas bonus to long-term Social Welfare clients by using a surplus in the social insurance fund for this year, and from existing resources in current spending."

Here, social insurance conts are being used to finance social assistance payments.

"The 2018 voted expenditure figures allow for pre-committed spending increases including for demographics, the carryover impact of prior years' measures, the Public Capital Plan published in September 2015, and the Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness agreed by Government last year.

The White Paper shows spending increasing by €1.1bn, from €51.3bn this year to €52.4bn in 2018."

This highlights that decisions on Budget Day are often less significant than they seem.

http://www.finance.gov.ie/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/White_Paper_2018.pdf

The opening pre-Budget position is a General Govt balance of -92m, or 0.0% of GDP.

Basically a balance budget.

Debt servicing to be steady at 6,288m.

I note an expected rise of 350m in our cont to the EU budget.

This is due to the strong recent rises in GDP.