Turkey runs surplus amid losses in EU market

ANKARA - Anadolu Agency

Turkey ran a budget surplus of 3.1 billion Turkish Liras in the first half of this year, the finance minister has announced, saying it should be perceived as a success for a country that has been battling with the recession in its largest export market, Europe.

“Our budget’s posting surplus in the first half displays our strong performance in the best way it could be,” Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek said yesterday during the press meeting organized on the budget realization for the January-June period.

The year-end budget deficit target of the government is 34 billion liras and first half figures promise that it would
be easy to achieve that, he added. Recalling that the centralbudget posted a 6.7 billion liras deficit in last year’s same period, Şimşek stressed that it was critically crucial amid the five-year-long crisis in the European Union and the worst global economic crisis of last 60 years. .

Şimsek added that Turkey’s tax revenues increased 31.7 percent in first half of the year over the same period last year and they reached to 26.7 billion liras. He underlined that in 2013, Turkish economy continued to recover although global growth rate came 0.8 points below estimations this year.