The economy is going bad for many of the country's municipalities. Now SVT has asked the municipalities how the welfare budget is being developed this year. About seven out of ten municipalities participated in the survey.

Every third municipality in the survey responds that the budget in at least some welfare area will be lower in 2020 than the year before. In other words, every third municipality that has responded will reduce welfare.

- I think that very many municipalities have had a fairly high cost situation, they have received more money, both high tax revenues and high contributions from the state for various things. Now you have a future where revenues do not increase as quickly. Then of course, you try to avoid that it goes beyond the quality, but sometimes it is unfortunately necessary to be so anyway, says Annika Wallenskog, chief economist at Sweden's municipalities and regions.

Cuts in several areas

Every fifth municipality in the survey responds that the budget will be lower in elderly care.

Almost as many state that the budget will be lower in preschool and school childcare. And just under a fifth respond that they are dropping out in elementary school, upper secondary school and other education.

Almost every fifth municipality also responds that this leads to poorer quality of welfare.

7.5 billion extra not enough

A majority in the Riksdag wants to give SEK 7.5 billion extra to municipalities and regions this year. According to Annika Wallenskog, it is welcome, but not enough.

- If the municipalities were to receive all the money that has been promised, they would still need to add as much themselves by, for example, streamlining or raising the tax to 2022.

Is the refugee wave 2015 and refugee reception an important factor when looking at which municipalities have problems?

- You can see that many of the municipalities that took a large number of refugees received high compensation for the asylum reception. Now they are running out of money and then they have built up a cost base that you can no longer afford. If you have a large number of refugees in a place where there are not very many jobs, the costs will also increase for that group, says Annika Wallenskog.

On the total then?

- If you look at what is called financial aid, it has not increased very much, but it remains at the same level as 2014 really. We see a slight increase, but it is more linked to the fact that the business cycle is starting to level out. On the other hand, we see that there are more students in the school, so we get a higher pressure on the school as a result of there being more children.