Huge 4.5G payments help Turkey hit budget surplus

Neşe Karanfil - ANKARA

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Turkey’s state budget hit a 7.2 billion-Turkish Lira surplus in October largely thanks to payments by leading communications companies that won the tender for advanced 4G technologies, dubbed “4.5G.”

Last October, the budget had a deficit of 3 billion liras. 

The state obtained 4.6 billion Turkish Liras of non-tax income from the 4.5G tender held in August, for which the first payments were made in October.

According to data from the Finance Ministry, total budget income was announced at 43.8 billion liras in October, a 28.2 percent increase from the same month of 2014. The budget expenses were announced on Nov. 16 at 36.6 billion liras, with a 1.7 percent decrease compared to the same month of the previous year.

Non-interest budget expenses were at 33.9 billion liras in October, a 12.4 percent increase on the same month of 2014. Tax income showed an increase of around 25.6 percent to 35 billion Turkish Liras and non-tax income increased by around 52.5 percent to 7.3 billion liras in October compared to the same month of 2014. 

The tender was completed in August at a value of over 3.3 billion euros. With the addition of value-added taxes, the amount rose to over 3.9 billion euros. The winning companies paid around 4.6 billion liras as the first payment in October. 

“This successful result is not a coincidence. It reflects our sensitivity on budget discipline,” Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek said in a statement.

According to the ministry, the government’s budget incomes reached 398 billion liras in the first 10 months of 2015, a 14.5 percent increase compared to the same period of 2014, while budget expenditure was 404.2 billion Turkish liras, an 11.5 percent increase from the same period last year.

The budget had a deficit of around 14.9 billion liras in the first 10 months of 2014. 

However, there was a dramatic rise in defense and security items this year. While around 253.9 million liras were spent for these items in October 2014, this amount increased to 519.5 million liras in October this year. 

A total of 1.4 billion liras were spent under the “hidden budget” category in the first 10 months of this year.