Budget Day tomorrow: What we know so far
Tuesday is Prinsjesdag, or Budget Day, in the Netherlands - held on the third Tuesday of September every year. At around 3:15 p.m., the caretaker cabinet will present the national budget for next year. Many of the budget plans leaked to the pres in recent weeks, though some not in much detail.
Over half of the government spending set in stone, like money for social assistance benefit and healthcare, according to RTL Nieuws. For the other half, the cabinet can choose where to spend. As the Rutte III cabinet is ruling in a caretaker capacity, their decisions were limited this year to non-controversial interventions.
Over 6 billion euros extra will be invested into reducing CO2 emissions, sources told RTL Nieuws. This concerns subsidies to make homes more sustainable and encourage electric driving. Some of the money is intended for businesses: 700 million euros is going to hydrogen projects, and 600 million euros to stimulating electric transport.
The cabinet is pushing 1 billion euros into stimulating the construction of affordable homes, sources told NOS. The money will go into the Housing Construction Incentive fund, intended to help municipalities realize affordable housing that is not actually financially profitable. The money will likely be spread over multiple years.
An extra 300 million euros will be pushed into subsidies for the tech industry, to stimulate new techniques and services in the chip and cloud sector, De Telegraaf reported. This must help get the Dutch tech sector among the global top.
After the murder of crime reporter Peter R. de Vries, the cabinet decided to push an extra 400 million euros into fighting organized crime, according to RTL. The money is intended for recruiting and training more community police officers and preventing undermining crime.
The Ministry of Defense will receive an extra 100 million euros next year. Of the amount, 60 million would be intended for ammunition and 30 million for veterans, insiders reported to ANP.
And 200 million euros will be pushed into increasing purchasing power for Dutch households, according to RTL Nieuws. Though that does not mean a big increase. Central planning office CPB said in its Macro Economic Outlook that purchasing power will increase by only 0.1 percent on average, with some households gaining more and some even losing purchasing power.
