(MTI) – Prime Minister Viktor Orban has failed to deliver on a promise that 2012 would be the year of lift-off and 2013 that of increase, Jozsef Tobias, deputy group leader for the Socialists said on Saturday.
The net minimum wage is 25,000 forints lower today than the 85,960 (EUR 291) needed for subsistence, Tobias told a press conference in Budapest.
He said that 17 percent of Hungarians live on less than 66,000 forints per head and 500,000 children are hungry in the country. He said welfare benefits have fallen to a half or third of what they were three years ago.
He said as a result of changes in the tax system 328 billion forints were “regrouped” to benefit the top 20 percent of earners while 70 percent of Hungarians saw a rise in their taxes amounting to 134 billion forints. He mentioned the financial transactions tax, the fat tax, a public utilities tax and a banking tax as examples.
Fidesz said in a statement on Saturday that Tobias was expressing “false concern” while he had voted for every austerity measure during the Socialist government. The Socialists had done everything whilst in power to increase the burden on Hungarians, the statement said. They doubled unemployment, doomed half the country to live on benefits or to take out foreign-currency mortgages. Wages were taxed at a high rate and household bills rocketed, it added.
Photo: mszp.hu