Bulgaria Q1 2018 Budget surplus at 592.7M leva
Bulgaria’s Finance Ministry said on April 30 that the consolidated Budget surplus for the first three months of 2018 was 592.7 million leva, or 0.6 per cent of this year’s estimated gross domestic product, short of the ministry’s forecast of 605.7 million leva issued last month.
The figure represented a decrease of 0.5 percentage points of GDP compared to the same period of 2017, when Bulgaria recorded a Budget surplus of 1.05 billion leva, the ministry said in a statement.
For April, the ministry forecast a Budget surplus of 1.33 billion leva at the end of the month. The fourth month of the year traditionally records a large jump in revenues because of income tax payments for the previous year, due at the end of April.
The state Budget had a surplus of 880.2 million leva and the EU funds deficit was 287.6 million leva. Bulgaria’s contribution to the EU budget for the first three months of 2018 was 308.2 million leva.
Revenue in January-March was 9.22 billion leva, with tax and non-tax revenue up 7.3 per cent, although that was partially offset by aid figures that were lower than in the first quarter of 2017.
Tax revenues were up by 7.4 per cent compared to January-March 2017, at 7.83 billion leva.
Budget spending was 8.63 billion leva in January-March, up from 7.78 billion leva in the same period of 2017. In part, that was due to higher pension and health insurance payments resulting from the pension hikes in 2017, the ministry said.
(Photo: Alessandro Paiva/sxc.hu)
