Impact on budget of measures to boost Turkish economy to be minimal: Ağbal

ISTANBUL

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The impact on the state budget of recent measures to boost Turkey’s economy will only be minimal and will gradually decrease, Finance Minister Naci Ağbal has said.  

The recent temporary tax cuts to boost consumption levels and financial incentives to back production and investments will add 0.74 percent to the budget deficit-to-GDP this year, Ağbal added on the sidelines of a meeting in Istanbul on April 26. 

He noted that 0.15 percent of this will come from measures to boost consumption and the remaining 0.60 percent will come from other incentives to boost the supply side. 

“The resulting budget gap-to-GDP will fall gradually to 0.35 in 2018 and 0.30 in 2019,” Ağbal said.

He vowed that these measures did not damage the government’s fiscal discipline and will enable several sectors to grow in the coming periods. 

“We had already seen the positive results of these measures by the end of 2016,” he said. 

The minister also said a total of 203,466 companies had received loans worth a total of 146.4 billion Turkish Liras as of April 25, in line with a new financing scheme under the heading of the Credit Guarantee Fund (KGF).