Bulgaria January-November 2022 Budget deficit at 398M leva
Bulgaria’s Finance Ministry has recorded a consolidated Budget deficit of 398 million leva in the first 11 months of the year, well below the ministry’s forecast, issued last month, of a 610 million leva deficit.
The figure represented a significant drop compared to the same period of 2021, when Bulgaria recorded a Budget surplus of 638.7 million leva.
For the full year 2022, the ministry forecast a Budget deficit of 2.9 per cent of gross domestic product, but gave no figure in real terms. On a cash basis, the deficit was forecast at 1.5 billion leva or one per cent of GDP, the ministry said.
Spending increases, including on subsidies, social payments and capital expenditure, outpaced the increase in revenue, despite higher-than-anticipated corporate tax income in November, the ministry said.
The state Budget had a deficit of 857.5 million leva in the first 11 months of the year and the EU funds recorded a surplus of 459.5 million leva. Bulgaria’s contribution to the EU budget for January-November 2022 was 1.68 billion leva.
Revenue in January-November was 56.47 billion leva, up 12 per cent from last year when excluding one-off income from state-owned energy companies. Tax revenues were 42.74 billion leva, an increase of 14.5 per cent, the ministry said.
Budget spending was 56.86 billion leva in the first 11 months of the year, compared to 47.14 billion leva in the same period of 2021.
(Illustration: svilen001/sxc.hu)
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