Turkish 2016 budget deficit comes in at $7.8 bln

ANKARA - Anadolu Agency

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Turkey’s government ran a 29.3 billion-Turkish Lira ($7.81 billion) budget deficit last year, the country’s finance minister said Jan. 16.      

The amount was around 1 percent of the country’s GDP, and 430 million liras ($114 million) less than was forecast for 2016, Naci Ağbal told a news conference in Ankara. 

“These results showed that we do not compromise on fiscal discipline despite difficult domestic and external conditions that Turkey experienced,” Ağbal said.      

Ağbal said the December 2016 budget deficit was 27.1 billion liras ($7.2 billion), with interest payments and personnel expenses such as social insurance payments amounting to a large part of the revenue.    
  
According to official data, government revenues in December stood at 45.8 billion liras ($12.2 billion), an 11.9 percent rise year-on-year, while budget expenditures were 73 billion liras ($19.4 billion), up 23.5 percent from a year earlier.      

According to the ministry, Turkey’s government budget revenue reached 554.4 billion liras ($148 billion) in 2016, a 14.8 percent increase compared to 2015.      

Budget expenditures for last year rose to 583.7 billion liras ($155.6 billion), marking a 15.3 percent increase year-on-year. Interest expenses stood at 50.2 billion liras ($13.4 billion) in that period, down by 5.2 percent from the previous year.      

The ministry had estimated budget expenses for the 2016 fiscal year at 570.5 billion liras ($188 billion), up by almost 10 percent compared to the 520.4 billion liras ($170.8 billion) in the forecast for 2015.
     
The government’s expenditures for health, pensions, and welfare rose nearly 33.3 percent in 2016 to 107 billion liras ($28.5 billion) over the previous year.    
  
Personnel expenditures rose 19 percent, reaching almost 149 billion liras ($39.6 billion) last year.