Turkish Treasury releases budget statistics for Feb.

By Gokhan Ergocun

ISTANBUL (AA) - Turkey's central government budget balance posted a deficit of nearly 16.77 billion Turkish liras ($3.16 billion) in February, the Treasury and Finance Ministry announced on Friday.

Turkey's budget revenues jumped by 9.7 percent year-on-year to hit 66.96 billion Turkish liras ($12.63 billion) in February, according to the official report.

The budget expenditures stood at nearly 83.74 billion Turkish liras ($15.8 billion) last month, increasing a 33.2 percent annual rise.

Excluding the interest payments, the budget balance saw a deficit of 2.07 billion Turkish liras ($390 million) in the month, while the interest expenditures were 14.7 billion Turkish liras ($2.77 billion).

Meanwhile, the government's tax incomes reached 57.5 billion Turkish liras ($10.8 billion) last month, posting a rise of a 9.4 percent on a yearly basis.

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate was around 5.30 as of end of February.

In January, the budget saw a surplus of 5.1 million Turkish liras ($953 million), with 96.95 billion Turkish liras ($18.32B) revenue, and 91.86 billion Turkish liras ($17.36B) expenses.

Last year, Turkey's central government budget balance showed a deficit of 72.6 billion Turkish liras ($14.8 billion), meeting a year-end target under the country's new economic program.

The government achieved the target of a 1.9 percent budget-deficit-to-gross-domestic-product ratio in 2018 under the new economic program announced in September last year.

According to the same program, the budget deficit/GDP ratio target is 1.8 percent this year, 1.9 percent next year, and 1.7 percent in 2021.