From the 2026 budget audit
Running costs for a ministry: frozen at 3.6 milliárd Ft while the mission shrinks.
Office, travel, procurement — the named operational cost of the Energy Ministry, held flat as the interventions it administers are phased out.
Roughly 910 Ft per taxpayer per year — 3,636 millió Ft in named operating costs, where real-terms erosion delivers the compression over time.
What you see — and what you don't
The seen: the running costs of a ministry building — systems, procurement, administration. The unseen: every wage-earner funding overhead for an institution whose core interventions are the subject of this chapter's reform proposals.
Objection
"You have to pay to keep the lights on — these are basic running costs, not waste."
Answer
Agreed. This line is frozen, not cut, precisely because it is the genuine operational cost. The reform targets the programmes the ministry administers — the price-cap fund, the discretionary grants — not the office itself. As those programmes wind down, the operating cost will follow.
Share if you think government running costs should fall as government programmes are removed.
The analyst's verdict
Ministry administration — Operating 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.
Free Society Institute
Support independent analysis
Our research is free, open, and unsponsored. If you find it valuable, help us keep it that way.