Turkey's budget deficit at $7.81BN for 2016

By Bahattin Gonultas

ANKARA (AA) – Turkey’s government ran a 29.3-billion Turkish lira ($7.81 billion) budget deficit last year, the country’s finance minister said on Monday.

The amount was around one percent of the country's GDP, and 430 million Turkish liras ($114million) less than was forecast for 2016, Naci Agbal told a news conference.

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

Agbal noted that the December budget deficit was 27.1 billion Turkish liras ($7.2 billion), with interest payments and personnel expenses such as social insurance payments taking up a large part of revenue.

According to official data, Turkish government revenues in December stood at 45.8 billion Turkish liras ($12.2 billion), an 11.9 percent rise year-on-year, while budget expenditures were 73 billion Turkish 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 with 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 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 Turkish liras ($28.5 billion) over the previous year.

Personnel expenditures rose 19 percent, reaching almost 149 billion Turkish liras ($39.6 billion) last year.