Bulgaria January-November 2023 Budget deficit at 980.3M leva
Bulgaria’s Finance Ministry has recorded a consolidated Budget deficit of 980.3 million leva in the first 11 months of last year, the equivalent of 0.5 per cent of the ministry’s gross domestic product forecast for 2023.
In the same period of 2022, Bulgaria recorded a Budget deficit of 398 million leva. For the full year 2023, the Finance Ministry projected a deficit of 2.8 per cent of GDP.
The Finance Ministry said that preliminary data put the projected deficit for 2023 at 2.2 per cent of GDP, which presented an opportunity for the government to approve 1.2 billion leva in advance payments for municipal investment projects, which will push the deficit to 2.8 per cent of GDP.
Revenue in January-November 2023 was 60.12 billion leva, up 6.5 per cent from last year. Tax revenues were 47.78 billion leva, an increase of 11.8 per cent, the ministry said.
Increased tax revenue was the main reason for the lower deficit. The higher revenue was due to advance payments of corporate tax and improved fiscal controls over the movement of goods through the country, the ministry said.
Budget spending was 61.1 billion leva in January-November 2023, up 7.4 per cent compared to the same period of 2022, with the bulk of the increase going to higher “social spending”, as well as increased wages in the public sector and capital expenditures, the ministry said.
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