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April 10th, 2013 
Peter Nolan
Updated
Treasurer Wayne Swan has given his strongest hint yet that the pressures driving the federal budget into a multi-billion dollar deficit will apply for the next few years.
In a speech to the Bloomberg Australia Economic Summit in Sydney, Mr Swan has spoken about troubles in the global economy “taking a sledgehammer to our budget revenues”.
“The high dollar and difficult global conditions are contributing to subdued price pressures across the board, which have hit profitability,” he said.
“As a result, we’re seeing further hits to revenues and it’s clear this will be felt right across the forwards [forward estimates].”
The forward estimates cover the so-called budget out years up to 2016-17.
“In this budget we will prepare a new set of forecasts, as we always do, and I’ll announce on the budget night,” he said.
“But it is very clear that these events – high dollar, crashing commodity prices at the end of last year, the impact of profitability and prices as a whole across our economy – means that our revenues are much lower than we anticipated.
“That is impacting not just in 2012-13 but across our forward estimates.”
There have been reports in the Australian Financial Review, quoting senior government sources on federal cabinet’s expenditure review committee, saying that the prospects for a surplus over the forward estimates are remote.
In December the Government dropped its commitment to deliver a budget surplus in 2012-13, citing continuing weakness in revenue.
The year-to-date deficit in January had hit $26.8 billion.
The budget will be brought down on May 14.
Topics:
government-and-politics,
federal-government,
budget,
business-economics-and-finance,
australia
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Source Article from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-10/swan-hint/4620532
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