/ world today news/ /For the third consecutive month in August, the consolidated budget reports deficits, but the rulers continue to boast of surpluses.
The little detail they conveniently omit is that surpluses are built up in the first five months of the year, and in the last three months the accumulated reserves are spent. This is happening against the background of a projected annual deficit of nearly BGN 1.3 billion, writes Kaloyan Staykov from the Institute for Market Economics (IMI).
From the monthly implementation of the budget, it can be seen that the deficit in August of about BGN 170 million is entirely due to a deficit of activities financed by European programs in the amount of about BGN 300 million, while the national budget reports a surplus. In the month of August, the consolidated revenues were only about BGN 100 million higher than in August 2014, which is again due to the receipts under the European programs – BGN 110 million less than in the previous year.
There are no surprises in tax revenues – receipts from the main revenue sources (VAT, excise taxes, personal income tax and corporate taxes) are increasing. The biggest contributors are excise duties on fuel and tobacco products, while VAT has a modest contribution mainly due to lower VAT receipts from imports.
The consolidated expenditures made in August were around their levels of the previous year, with a serious increase observed only in capital expenditures, over 90% of which were financed with European funds.
Regarding the overall implementation of the consolidated budget for the period January-August, several peculiarities are observed. First of all, this is the structure of revenues, which are about BGN 2.3 billion higher compared to the first eight months of 2014. About 2/3 of the increase is due to higher receipts from tax revenues and about 1/3 – of the revenues under European programs. This is a stark difference from the January-April period, when higher revenues were due equally to increased tax revenue and EU aid.
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