The total volume of this year's state budget is €20.9 billion and the supplementary budget will mainly fund the development of the eastern border and artificial intelligence. 

Ligi said expenditures will not increase under the supplementary budget, though it does reflect the state's funding for the new explosives factory. He said it is a matter of amending the budget and reallocating sums to cover urgent needs.

"Our biggest and most pressing problem was continuing construction of the eastern border, because €17 million from last year remained unspent. As a new initiative, there is €11 million in funding for artificial intelligence, which in the future should make the public sector more efficient. And what has perhaps also received a lot of public attention is the technical mishap with the gambling tax, where at the start of the year no money was received at all; this will be compensated to the Cultural Endowment," the minister said.

The government will attempt to make a final decision on the supplementary budget on Monday, after which it will move to the Riigikogu.

Chairman of the opposition party Isamaa, Urmas Reinsalu, believes the coalition should focus on savings and reducing the budget deficit.

"The spring forecast shows us, compared with the state budget strategy, that the projected deficit for the coming years has grown by another €1 billion, and in light of this news the government should make not a positive supplementary budget but a negative supplementary budget to reduce governance costs," he said.

However, Ligi said this is "not reasonable."

"We drew up the budget in December, we have managed budget balance better than we hoped in December, and war and defense expenditures have not disappeared anywhere. Defense spending at 5.4 percent is still a very steep increase, and all critics should remember that this is what our loosening of the budget rule in Europe is based on, and this is also what our need to allow the budget to fall into a deeper deficit is based on," the minister said.

The Bank of Estonia is also concerned about the large and persistent deficit. In the coming years, Estonia's debt burden will grow rapidly, and along with it the cost of servicing loans.

"If Estonia is able to borrow at an interest rate of around 3 to 4 percent, then every additional €10 billion in debt means €300-400 million in annual costs for us. That is already such a scale of expenditure that we are also talking about very significant funding being carried out with that money. €400-500 million already covers higher education funding," said Ülo Kaasik,  deputy governor of the Bank of Estonia.

Kaasik added that reducing the deficit is a question of political choice and will. In his view, it would be worth considering agreeing on budget targets across party lines.

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