From the 2026 budget audit
A ministry built around a price cap should shrink as the cap goes.
15.3 milliárd Ft in personnel costs for a ministry whose mandate is tied to interventions this analysis proposes winding down.
Roughly 3,830 Ft per taxpayer per year — 15,318 millió Ft in ministry payroll, frozen rather than cut while the programmes it administers are phased out.
What you see — and what you don't
The seen: ministry staff administering energy regulation, price-cap operations, and SOE oversight. The unseen: every worker funding a civil-service headcount whose size is defended by the very interventions the renewal programme removes.
Objection
"The ministry has to run — you can't just eliminate the staff overnight."
Answer
No one is proposing overnight elimination. A nominal freeze lets real-terms erosion do the gradual work: at 2.5% annual inflation, 15 milliárd Ft frozen today is worth roughly 20-25% less in real terms after a decade. As the price-cap fund and the enterprise grants are phased out, the ministry's mandate narrows and its headcount can follow.
Share if you think a ministry's size should follow its actual mandate.
The analyst's verdict
Ministry administration — Personnel expenditures
Rationale
The honest position is that the ministry's mandate should shrink as the interventions analysed below are wound down — a ministry that no longer administers a household price-cap fund, no longer manages a portfolio of energy SOEs, and no longer disburses discretionary enterprise-support programmes needs fewer staff and less office. But that shrinkage follows the programme phase-outs rather than leading them; freezing the administrative lines at nominal level lets real-terms erosion (roughly 20-25% of real value over a decade at 2.5% inflation) do the gradual work while the substantive reforms set the pace.
Transition mechanism
Hold the allocation at nominal level; real-terms erosion at roughly 2.5% average inflation reduces real value by approximately 20-25% over a decade. Shrinkage follows the programme phase-outs rather than leading them.
Affected groups
Ministry staff, on a slow, attrition-paced adjustment rather than a cut.
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