The Croatian finance ministry plans to perform a budget revision in the last quarter of 2013 in order to cover HRK 3bn (EUR 403mn) liabilities of the public healthcare sector, news agency HINA reported, quoting finance minister Slavko Linic as saying.

Linic stressed that the budget deficit for the first half of 2013 is very high, exceeding the planned budget deficit for the whole 2013.

However, the finance ministry will try to cover the gap by end-2013 by rescheduling the HRK 3bn liabilities of the health sector as the ministry does not expect to have an additional HRK 3bn on the revenues side of the budget by year-end. Linic said that the revision will be technical and will be done to register the payment of the health sector liabilities in the last quarter of 2013, when a draft budget for 2014 and projections for 2015 and 2016 budgets will be made.

In April, the Croatian parliament approved the first revision of the 2013 budget plan, which envisages a budget deficit of HRK 10.2bn, or 3% of GDP this year, down by 0.2pps from the initial plan.

In addition, the finance ministry plans to issue state bonds on the domestic market next week. Part of the issue will comprise kuna-pegged bonds, while the other part will be denominated in foreign currency. Linic said that the interest rate on the issue will be about 5%, while the maturity will be rather long. He did not disclose the amount of the issue.