From the 2026 budget audit
The farms that draw the water should fund the works that deliver it.
Operating costs for state-funded irrigation development — a productive agricultural asset whose benefit accrues to specific farms, phased out over 3 years.
4.0 millió Ft in operating costs — a small sum, but the principle holds: irrigation serves the farms connected to it, not the general taxpayer funding it.
What you see — and what you don't
The seen: irrigation infrastructure reaching specific agricultural operations. The unseen: the urban wage-earner with no land and no agricultural income, funding water-delivery works that benefit identifiable farm enterprises.
Objection
"Farmers already operate on thin margins — they can't afford to fund their own irrigation infrastructure."
Answer
Flood defence is different from irrigation: a flood harms everyone in the floodplain regardless of their choice. Irrigation is a productive asset serving the farms that use it. Where margins are thin, the reform can provide co-investment schemes or usage-charge financing — structures that let the benefiting farms fund the works over time — rather than shifting the cost onto the general tax base of people who grow no crops.
Share if you think irrigation costs should be borne by the farms that draw the water.
The analyst's verdict
Water development tasks — Irrigation developments — operating
Rationale
Irrigation infrastructure is a productive agricultural asset whose benefit accrues to the specific farms it serves. Unlike flood defence — which protects against involuntary harm to whoever happens to be in the floodplain — irrigation is a private good consumed by identifiable agricultural producers, and the case for financing it from general tax is weak: the farms that gain from the water should fund the works that deliver it, through usage charges or co-investment. The phase-out is gradual only because irrigation works already under construction are multi-year contracts. A 3-year linear phase-out lets in-flight projects complete; net saving rises from 2,250.0 millió Ft in year 1 to the full 6,750.0 millió Ft in year 3, after which new irrigation investment is funded by the benefiting agricultural users.
Transition mechanism
Linear over 3 years, allowing in-flight irrigation construction contracts to complete. Net saving rises from 2,250.0 millió Ft in year 1 to the full 6,750.0 millió Ft in year 3, after which new irrigation investment is funded by the benefiting agricultural users.
Affected groups
Construction contractors on in-flight irrigation projects (protected through run-off); agricultural producers, who fund new irrigation capacity directly rather than through general tax.
Free Society Institute
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