Turkey record 231 million lira budget surplus

Turkey's year-end budget deficit will come in below the 34 billion Turkish Liras ($16.8 billion) currently forecast by the government, the finance minister said yesterday, after the announcement of bright budget data driven by higher tax and privatization revenues. "The budget has displayed a strong performance and recorded 231 million liras of surplus and 38 billion liras non-interest surplus. This realization has proved 'the election budget will be implemented and the budget deficit will rise' speculations are baseless," Turkish Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek said. The budget income of the country rose 17.9 percent in the January-August period compared to the same period last year, and reached 260 billion liras, while the budget spending increased with a smaller rate of 13.4 percent, realizing at 259.7 billion liras. "The privatization receipts and better import and consumption tax collection thanks to pick-up in the domestic demand had affected the positive performance," Simsek has said in a public statement. In this period, the privatization revenues doubled the government's target for the eight months and came in at 8.3 billion liras. Some 87 tenders were conducted between January and July by the Privatization Authority (OIB), while agreements were signed for privatizations worth 15.1 billion liras during the same period, according to privatization regulator. Meanwhile, the government raised the value-added tax it collected by 29.6 percent, special consumption tax by 24.1 percent and in-house VAT by 22.4 percent.