Bulgaria January 2019 Budget surplus at 1.01B leva
Bulgaria’s Finance Ministry said that the consolidated Budget surplus for the first month of 2019 was 1.01 billion leva, or 0.9 per cent of this year’s estimated gross domestic product, short of the ministry’s forecast of 1.1 billion leva issued last month.
The figure represented a drop of 0.2 percentage points of GDP compared to the same period of 2018, when Bulgaria recorded a Budget surplus of 1.16 billion leva. For February, the ministry forecast a Budget surplus of 1.5 billion leva at the end of the month.
The state Budget had a surplus of 944.1 million leva and the EU funds surplus was 61.7 million leva. Bulgaria’s contribution to the EU budget for the first month of 2019 was 149 million leva.
Revenue in January was 3.72 billion leva, compared to 3.71 billion leva in the same period of last year. Tax revenues were 3.03 billion leva, down from 3.35 billion leva in January 2018.
Budget spending was 2.71 billion leva in January, up from 2.54 billion leva in the same period of 2018. In part, that was due to higher pension and health insurance payments resulting from the pension hikes in 2018, Bulgaria’s increased EU budget contribution and increased capital spending, the ministry said.
(Photo: Alessandro Paiva/sxc.hu)
