This year's deficit (including bank restructuring costs) is meanwhile projected to reach 4.4% of GDP, 0.3 percentage points higher than originally planned.

These are the figures that the government will submit to the European Commission today as part of EU supervision of national budgets.

The figures will be reviewed within a month and member states, in particularly countries like Slovenia that are in breach of the debt and deficit ceiling, may be asked to correct their budgets.

The projections also indicate the first measures that the government will take this year based on the announcement that the budget for 2015 will have to be revised due to unrealistic revenue assumptions.

Finance Minister Dušan Mramor has indicated that an all-out austerity drive was out of the question. Instead the government plans to pursue fiscal consolidation with a mix of additional revenue and small-scale spending cuts.