In a guest editorial for the largest circulation daily Helsingin Sanomat Saturday, Finance Minister Jutta Urpilainen noted that a working group led by top-ranking civil servant Martti Hetemäki has proposed pro-rating government’s three-billion-euro adjustment programme over the three-year period 2015 to 2017.
Urpilainen said the expert group was concerned that implementing the adjustment programme in one year would be endanger economic growth. However, Urpilainen noted that a three-year programme would also impose the adjustment burden on the next government coming into office after elections in 2015.
The Minister proposed as an alternative front-loading the spending cuts and tax hikes "to maintain credibility in (the government’s) economic policies".
"In that case, about half of the estimated adjustment package of three billion euros would be implemented as early as next year," she wrote in the guest editorial.