RIGA — A technical mission from the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and the World Bank will be in Latvia all this week to get acquainted with the progress of the 2010 budget project, one of the government’s most important tasks.

The government has to reduce expenditure in the budget by 275 million lats (€385 million) in order to decrease the budget deficit by 500 million lats (€708 million).

The government has said that 2010’s state budget deficit cannot be higher than 8.5 percent of gross domestic product. For this, Latvia has committed to reduce its budget spending next year by another 500 million lats, four percent of the country’s GDP.

The international lenders will meet with representatives from the State Revenue Service, the State Treasury, other government branches, banks and private sector, Diana Kurpniece, director of the Finance Ministry’s communications department said.

Next year’s state budget revenue is expected to be 351 million (€497 million) lats lower than this year.

The Finance Ministry predicts that by the end of this year, tax revenue will total 3.9 billion lats (€5.5 billion), 30.1 percent of Latvia’s GDP. Next year’s tax revenue is expected to reach 3.6 billion lats (€5 billion).