Bratislava’s final account – despite its largest investments, the city has its highest surplus
19. 06. 2025
Bratislava, 19 June 2025 – The final account of the city of Bratislava, which city councillors discussed at today’s final pre-holiday meeting of the city council, shows that thanks to good management, the city achieved the highest current budget surplus in the last four years. It also reduced its debt level, transferred more money into the reserve fund, and sent its historically highest amount into the mobility fund.
Despite the very difficult financial and economic situation that Slovakia and local governments in particular find themselves in, Bratislava was able, thanks to good management, to close the previous year with a very positive balance in its accounts. And this occurred despite the cuts in resources for local governments and the government’s consolidation measures.
The total surplus of current expenditures that the capital city achieved in 2024 was over 27.1 million euros. Thanks to this management surplus, the city could redirect more money into the creation of a reserve fund, which grew to almost 11 million euros, which is roughly 4 million euros more than in the previous year and almost 5 million euros more than in 2022. Likewise, the volume of resources directed into the mobility fund increased – namely to some 3.7 million euros – which is 1.5 million euros more than in 2023.
At the same time, the city reduced its debt ratio to 46.09%, which represents a year-on-year decrease of 1.36%.
Due to the quality management of investments and projects, a record level of capital expenditure was achieved in the past year, reaching 93% of the budget plan. For comparison, before Covid this was around 70%, and in 2023 this level of expenditure reached 73.8%. The above is also a confirmation that the city is managing to save and lower its debt even alongside significantly higher investments, as the volume of capital expenditure last year exceeded 97.8 million euros, highest amount since at least 2018. Simply put, the city was able to save on operations and invest significantly more in infrastructure.
All of these results were achieved thanks to targeted measures by the city management, focused mainly on making the city’s operations more efficient, working with data on current spending, and the flexible management of funds.