Turkey lowers share of interest payments

ANKARA - Anatolia News Agency

Some 16 or 17 percent of tax revenues allocated for interest payments were lowered today from 86 percent in 2002, Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek has said.

“The remaining [84 percent] returned to the nation and the country as services. Tax auditing had a crucial role in this improvement,” he said late Nov. 20 in a speech at a ceremony to open the new education center of the Finance Ministry Tax Audit Board. The Finance Ministry took a revolutionary step to improve tax auditing last year by uniting four different auditing units under one roof, bringing lack of coordination to an end, he said, adding that the ministry would particularly focus on combating the informal economy in the upcoming period.

According to international estimates, the share of the informal economy in Turkey is currently around 27 percent, down from around 34 percent 10 years ago, according to Şimşek.

“The average ratio of the informal economy in the European Union is about 19 percent,” he said.