Turkey’s budget deficit drops to 534 mln liras

Bloomberg

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The budget gap shrank to 534 million Turkish Liras ($343 million) from 4.7 billion liras in the same month last year, the Treasury in Ankara said in a statement Friday. Excluding interest payments on debt, the budget had a surplus of 761 million liras, compared with a deficit of 386 million liras a year earlier.

The government says a wider budget deficit this year is inevitable as it increases spending in order to preserve jobs in the face of an economic slowdown that’s eating into tax revenue. The Treasury figures are preliminary data that measure cash inflows and outflows.

The Finance Ministry will release full budget figures later this month. The budget deficit may exceed 60 billion liras ($39 billion) this year, based on a study by the Turkish Economic Policy Research Foundation, daily Milliyet reported. The forecast assumes a contraction of 5 percent in economic output this year, Milliyet said. TEPAV said the government should submit a revised budget to parliament.