It is necessary to clarify the issue with the costs of the merge of public media, said Latvian Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš in an interview to LTV programme Rīta panorāma.
When asked if the long-term budget has funding listed for merged public media, the PM said no, adding that currently no one knows how large this funding needs to be.
«The difficulty is that SEPLP [Public Electronic Mass Media Council] had planned to determine it once the reform was already on the road,
but I think it would have been better if this was done at the start,» said the head of the government, adding that this way it would be easier to plan out the necessary funding and its source.
According to the PM, in this situation the biggest challenge is that usually the budget and reforms that affect it are proposed by the executive power – the government after receiving some ministry’s offer, but in this case the reform was proposed by an independent institution – SEPLP. On top of that, this offer will affect the state budget.
When asked when and how the interests of the authors of the reform and budget planners could meet, Kariņš said it should have happened during the discussion process. «For example, the Ministry of Finance needs to determine how much money will be necessary and where it should come from, because giving more money [to one] means giving less somewhere else, and this is a political issue for the government and the Saeima to tackle together,» said the expert.
He said he is confident the financial topics should be made clear soon. It would be better to do it sooner than later, because the worst thing we could do is develop reform and then fail to reach an agreement on funding for it, Kariņš concluded.
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