Bulgaria January-October 2020 Budget surplus at 654.3M leva
Bulgaria’s Finance Ministry said on November 30 that the consolidated Budget surplus for the first 10 months of 2020 was 654.3 million leva, exceeding the ministry’s 618 million leva forecast issued last month.
This was down from the 1.08 billion leva surplus recorded in the same period of 2019. For November, the Finance Ministry projected the Budget balance to swing to a deficit of 183.2 million leva, or 0.2 per cent of gross domestic product.
The state Budget had a surplus of 466.4 million leva and the EU funds surplus was 187.9 million leva. Bulgaria’s contribution to the EU budget for the first 10 months of 2020 was 990.2 million leva.
Revenue in January-October was 36.26 billion leva, a decline of 58 million leva compared to the same period of last year. Tax revenues were up to 29.25 billion leva, compared to 29.09 billion leva in January-October 2019.
The Finance Ministry said that recent months showed a trend of gradual improvement in tax revenue, which compensated slowdown earlier this year, during the early stage of the coronavirus pandemic.
Budget spending was 35.61 billion leva in the first 10 months of this year, slightly up compared to the same period of 2019, when it was 35.24 billion leva.
The main change was in the distribution of spending, with last year’s capital expenditures boosted by the international government procurement contracts to acquire eight F-16 Block 70 aircraft and related equipment. This year’s figures had higher spending on social payments, subsidies and staff costs, as well as measures to counter the economic effect of the Covid-19 pandemic, the ministry said.
(Illustration: svilen001/sxc.hu)
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