"It's an election year and many parties are going to present their reforms, but people also need to bear in mind that a large proportion of the leeway for extra spending over the coming mandate period is already spoken for," Svantesson said at a press conference on Friday morning.
"There is going to be limited space for unfinanced election promises. This is something it is important for the Swedish people to know."
At the press conference, Svantesson presented a slide showing the spending decisions already made for the years 2027 to 2030, with high spending expected on defence (green), infrastructure (light blue) and criminal justice (dark blue).
Svantesson's statement drew sharp criticism from the opposition parties and comes as the Swedish Fiscal Policy Council, which assesses the economic impact of government borrowing and spending, is expected to slam the government's 2026 budget in its annual assessment.
The experts on the council write that they have presented the "most severe criticism" the council has ever given a government in this year's report, which has been obtained by Swedish public broadcaster SVT ahead of publication on Monday.
The report slams the government as behaving in a "short-sighted and political" way, by using debt to finance heavy tax cuts while massively increasing defence spending outside of Sweden's fiscal policy framework.
“It is striking to claim that it is necessary to deviate from the balance target in order to cope with the increased defense spending in the short term, at the same time as it is clearly possible to further reduce income tax by a similar amount,” the report reads.
The Social Democrats and Centre Party, who backed the decision to fund defence spending from outside the framework, nonetheless accused Svantesson of mismanaging the nation's finances.
Mikael Damberg, economic spokesperson for the Social Democrats, attacked Svantesson for her "deeply irresponsible" statement.
"We are seeing the receipts of an irresponsible economic policy," he said. "This is not the first time we have had a right-wing government that leaves behind it a big deficit, low growth and high unemployment."
Martin Ådahl, the Centre Party's economic policy spokesperson, said the government's economic policy had failed.
"Despite an expansionary fiscal policy, the Swedish economy is in the bottom league of the EU. It is disappointing that the government has wasted so many resources without reducing unemployment and increasing people's real incomes," he wrote.
Svantesson said that the leeway for future spending was tight because of the major spending commitments the government has made on building new prisons, increasing Sweden's defence capacity, and on other infrastructure.
In the autumn, the government presented an extremely expansive pre-election budget which included 80 billion kronor in extra spending, including a decision to halve VAT on food during the election year, with most of the extra spending funded by increased government debt.
Svantesson said that the Moderate Party intended to ensure that all of its election promises for the coming mandate were properly financed, so that if the government wins a second term it can carry out its election pledges at the same time as strengthening the public finances.
"You can finance a lot of what you want to do with higher taxes, the problem is that this drags down growth," she said. "I also think it's bad politics."
She said that there was also limited scope for the debt funding of government spending if the government wanted to bring the public finances back into balance, as the Social Democrats have also agreed to do.
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