Bulgaria January-February 2019 Budget surplus at 1.51B leva
Bulgaria’s Finance Ministry has said that the consolidated Budget surplus for the first two months of 2019 was 1.51 billion leva, or 1.3 per cent of this year’s estimated gross domestic product, exceeding the ministry’s forecast of 1.5 billion leva issued last month.
The figure represented an increase of 0.6 percentage points of GDP compared to the same period of 2018, when Bulgaria recorded a Budget surplus of 752.3 million leva, the ministry said in a statement.
For March, the ministry forecast a Budget surplus of 1.79 billion leva at the end of the month.
The state Budget had a surplus of 1.28 billion leva and the EU funds surplus was 230.6 million leva. Bulgaria’s contribution to the EU budget for the first two months of 2019 was 371.8 million leva.
Revenue in January-February was 7.22 billion leva, an improvement of 16.2 per cent compared to the same period of last year. Tax revenues were up 3.6 per cent compared to January-February 2018, at 5.58 billion leva.
Budget spending was 5.71 billion leva in January-February, up from 5.46 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, wage hikes in the education sector and increased capital spending, the ministry said.
(Photo: svilen001/sxc.hu)
