BERLIN, May 19 (Reuters) - German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told fellow cabinet members on Wednesday their initial spending proposals for the 2011 budget were far too high, people who attended the cabinet meeting told Reuters.
According to finance ministry estimates, total departmental requests together would exceed current budget plans by nine billion euros for the years 2011-14.
During the euro zone debt crisis, Chancellor Angela Merkel has called for member states to cut budget deficits. However, Germany itself is set to break the EU limit by a wide margin, albeit less so than in most large euro zone economies.
Werner Gatzer, a state secretary at the Finance Ministry, also called for greater savings from government departments.
"To ensure the necessary amounts of budget consolidation are achieved, I expect savings in the order of three billion euros initially," Gatzer wrote in a letter obtained by Reuters.
The letter, dated May 18, was addressed to state secretaries (junior ministers) at every German ministry. However, Gatzer said this was only "a small first step" and that further budget savings would need to be discussed in the next few weeks.
Germany's public deficit is expected to exceed 5 percent of GDP this year. Although this is significantly lower than levels in some other euro zone states, it still breaches the European Union's official three percent cap. The government is due to present the draft 2011 budget at the end of June.
For the first time, it has taken into account a new "debt brake" law requiring the government to reduce the debt-to-gross domestic product ratio and cut the structural deficit by 10 billion euros, say experts. (Reporting by Andreas Rinke and Matthias Sobolewski, writing by David Stamp; editing by Stephen Brown)