PROBLEMS OF PUBLIC EXPENSES IN THE ECONOM ICS OF THE SLOVAK-REPUBLIC

No uniform definition of public expenses exists in professional litera ture. In spite of that the author indicates a possible limitation of p ublic expenses. The relation is defined between public relations and t he public sector. The public sector cannot be unconditionally unified with expenses for public sector. In spite of that the very narrow rela tion exists between the extent of the public sector and the public exp enses. Big growth of public expenses in previous two up to three decad es caused the growth of the public sector. The comparisons were presen ted in several countries where, comparatively, big differences appeare d, while the order of countries with certain share of public expenses kept relative stability. This relative stability confirms the experien ce that, from the political viewpoint, radical reforms are non-accepta ble for majority of countries, because they would require significant changes of redistribution measures. It is said that so called Wagner L aw on continuously growing share of public expenses was confirmed in t he case of long period - even when it was in the decreasing share - an d its validity was nearly interrupted in last years. It results from t hat the growth of public expenses and the whole public sector does not have such unambiguous even fatal consequences (in relation to continu ous ''vigorousness'' of the public sector and public expenses). Vice v ersa. It is shown that there is an attempt to apply a new approach, wh ich should be mainly qualitative approach to the public sector. In the economy of Slovakia on one hand there is an effort to ''clean'', or t o restrict the public sector, but on the other hand this process has m any opponents. The process of the public sector ''cleaning'' has its o wn boundaries. Certain part of the property remains in the public sect or. There is so called clean non-market property in the framework of w hich the problems of externals are solved. Also in the inner side of t his sphere the rationalisation measures are not negligible in the use of finances. In the conclusion the author analyses the resources of th e financing of the public expenses in the economy of Slovakia. The res ources for the public expense funding show, in their breaking down to the national budget and the self-government budgets, that the expenses for the public administration were provided in Slovakia in last years , prevailingly, through the state administration with the minimum spac e for the self-government. In average in 1991-1995, 90% of expenses we re funded through the state administration and only 10% through the se lf-governments. Also the total tendency is directed to the high centra lisation of expenses for the public administration. It is a little bit curious that it runs on conditions where, practically, all political forces (parties) verbally support the decentralisation process in dire ction to the self-government.