Bulgaria January-February 2017 Budget surplus at 831.8M leva

Bulgaria’s Finance Ministry said that the consolidated Budget surplus for the first two months of 2017 was 831.8 million leva, or 0.9 per cent of this year’s estimated gross domestic product, exceeding the ministry’s 822.4 million leva forecast issued last month.

The figure represented a decline of 0.1 percentage points of GDP compared to the same period of 2016, when Bulgaria recorded a Budget surplus of 915.2 million leva. For March, the ministry forecast a Budget surplus of 1.06 billion leva at the end of the month.

The state Budget had a surplus of 698.5 million leva and the EU funds surplus was 133.3 million leva. Bulgaria’s contribution to the EU budget for the first two months of 2017 was 154.3 million leva.

Revenue in January-February was 5.73 billion leva, an improvement of 3.9 per cent compared to the same period of last year. Tax revenues were up by 11.5 per cent compared to the first two months of last year, at 4.72 billion leva.

Budget spending was 4.9 billion leva in January-February, up from 4.6 billion leva in the same period of 2016. In part, that was due to higher pension and health insurance payments resulting from the pension hike in July 2016, the finance ministry said.

(Photo: Alessandro Paiva)

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