Illustration – Photo: kormany.hu

LMP: Government wants to ‘choke’ local councils

Opposition LMP believes the government doesn't want to help small- and medium-sized enterprises by suspending the local business tax, rather it wants to "choke" local councils, the party's co-leader said at an online press conference on Facebook on Sunday.

Mate Kanasz-Nagy said that even though Hungarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chairman Laszlo Parragh, “the government’s shadow minister”, brought up the idea, it was really Prime Minister Viktor Orbán who thought it up with the intention of avenging the opposition’s success in municipal council elections.

He said that waiving the local business tax would create an 800 billion forint (EUR 2.2bn) shortfall for local governments, making the provision of municipal services impossible.

LMP continues to press for wage support, waiving social insurance contributions and introducing preferential credit for sole proprietors, Kanasz-Nagy said. The government ought to offer direct subsidies to SMEs, instead of multinationals, he added.

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