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Refugee crisis to cost Austria gov't 2 bln euros in 2016: report

Xinhua, April 28, 2016 Adjust font size:

The ongoing refugee crisis is set to cost the Austrian government two billion euros (2.26 billion U.S. dollars) in 2016, Austria Press Agency (APA) reported Wednesday.

The costs, the lion's share of which is 1.6 billion dollars in social welfare spending, were laid out as part of the government's stability program encompassing the crisis, which was sent to Brussels on Tuesday.

Austria will only be able to meet its European Union-set structural zero deficit budget targets if the additional costs related to the refugee crisis are left out, an arrangement in place for 2015 and 2016 that it also wishes to have extended to 2017, according to the APA report.

The total is significantly higher than the previously-announced figure of one billion euros by the federal government, as the costs for states and municipalities are now also factored in, the APA report said.

The funding will primarily go to the 88,175 persons who entered Austria in 2015 and subsequently applied for asylum. This figure is expected to be much lower in the current year due to a government-set upper limit of 37,500 asylum applications.

The 1.6 billion euros in social welfare will make up about two percent of the country's total welfare spending, whith reached 73.6 billion euros in 2015. Endit