German Finance Minister Christian Lindner has set aside about €83 billion euros in the coming year to finance Berlin’s cap on gas and electricity prices, planned until April 2024.
The cap is aimed at supporting households and businesses, at a time when inflation exceeds 10% countrywide.
These projections are contained in the economic plan for Germany's €200 billion special fund, seen by DPA news agency, which also had access to the draft German budget for 2023.
The €200-billion budget, planned to cope with high energy prices, is supposed to be enough until 2024, but the finance minister is already projecting more than half of this sum for 2023 alone. Many support measures that have already been decided in Germany also appear in the plan, such as subsidies for heating or housing.
According to the draft budget, the decision not to allow an increase in the price per tonne of CO2 next year is also expected to cost the German government around €2 billion. To what extent Minister Linder will allow debt remains unclear in the German budget proposal. But it is expected that more loans will be allowed than previously suggested, due to the weak economic forecast.
