Q How was the economy when you became finance minister?
A We inherited a situation that was not so rosy. There were a lot of expenditures that were unforeseen in the budget and we had to cover them, and there were a lot of unknowns in December 2004. One was the value added tax because we were just joining the EU and, frankly, none of the experts knew how the system would work. As it turned out, it worked much better than expected: the shortfall that was predicted didn’t materialise. But because we were afraid of the shortfall, it forced us to to take action.
