Bulgaria January-November 2021 Budget surplus at 638.7M leva

Bulgaria’s Finance Ministry said on December 31 that the consolidated Budget surplus for the first 11 months of 2021 was 638.7 million leva, or 0.5 per cent of gross domestic product, above the ministry’s 570 million leva forecast issued last month.

This was an improvement on the same period of last year, when Bulgaria recorded a Budget deficit of 213.7 million leva.

For the full year 2021, the ministry expects to record a deficit of four billion leva, or three per cent of GDP, while the revised 2021 Budget Act envisioned a deficit of 4.6 billion leva.

The sharp increase in the deficit in the last month of the year is due to the bulk of additional payments on Covid-19 measures, but also upcoming compensation payments for high energy prices to non-household consumers the ministry said.

The state Budget had a surplus of 806.6 million leva and the EU funds recorded a deficit of 167.9 million leva at the end of November. Bulgaria’s contribution to the EU budget for the first 11 months of 2021 was 1.55 billion leva.

Revenue in January-November was 47.78 billion leva, an increase of 20.4 per cent compared to the same period of last year, the Finance Ministry said. Tax revenues were 37.34 billion leva, an increase of 16.6 per cent compared to January-November 2020.

Budget spending was up to 47.14 billion leva in the first 11 months of the year, compared to 39.91 billion leva in the same period of 2020.

The increase was mainly due to higher spending on social and economic measures meant to overcome the negative effects of Covid-19, as well as increased spending in the social sector and administration costs, the ministry said.

(Illustration: svilen001/sxc.hu)

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