The National Bank of Hungary estimated Hungary’s general government deficit would reach 2.5pc of GDP next year in an analysis of the 2015 budget bill published on Thursday. The projection is a hair over the 2.4pc target in the budget bill submitted by the government. Revenue and spending targets were „basically well-founded” but „risks do arise in some areas”, the central bank said in the analysis. The estimate assumes that fiscal reserves in the National Protection Fund will be cancelled next year, similar to previous years, the NBH said, noting that the fund was smaller, at HUF 60bn, for 2015, providing a „limited scale of coverage” for risk. The NBH projected Hungary’s state debt-to-GDP ratio would fall about 1.1 percentage point to 76.1pc at the end of 2015 from the end of this year. The budget bill targets a drop of about 1 percentage point at unchanged exchange rates. The macroeconomic projections in the budget bill are „well-founded and similar to the NBH’s current forecast”, according to the analysis. The budget bill projects GDP growth of 2.5pc and average annual inflation of 1.8pc. In the NBH’s latest forecast, released in September, it put GDP growth at 2.4pc and inflation at 2.5pc. But the central bank said in the analysis that data released since then and the big fall in oil prices translate as downward risk for the inflation projection. The biggest difference between the two projections is the government’s higher forecast wage growth, it added. The NBH said the lack of details on a number of new measures contained in the budget made an accurate assessment difficult, but it still included them among risks. The risks noted by the NBH in the analysis were HUF 169bn in „sale and utilisation revenue” and a HUF 40bn increase revenue from road tolls. Measures supporting neither target are detailed in the budget bill, the NBH said. An increase in the „oversight fee” paid by supermarkets contained in the tax bill is a positive risk, but the effect of this change is not included in the budget bill, it added. The cut-off date for the analysis was November 7, the NBH said.