Turkey's budget balance sees $1.7B deficit in Oct

ANKARA

Turkey's central government budget balance saw a deficit of 17.4 billion Turkish liras ($1.7 billion) in October, the Treasury and Finance Ministry announced on Monday.

The figure was 4.9 billion Turkish liras ($490 million) in the same month last year.

Turkey's budget revenues increased by 22.9% year-on-year to 114 billion liras ($11.4 billion) in October.

The country's budget expenditures totaled 131.4 billion liras ($13.1 billion), up 34.6% from a year ago.

The budget balance, excluding interest payments, posted a deficit of 3.1 billion liras ($310 million) over the same period, while it saw a surplus of $6.9 billion ($690 million) in the same period last year.

Tax revenues totaled 96.1 billion liras ($9.6 billion), while interest payments amounted to 14.3 billion liras ($1.4 billion) over the same period.

Budget revenues increased by 34.3% in January-October compared to the same period last year and reached 1.1 trillion liras ($110 billion), while expenditures rose by 22.3% to 1.18 trillion liras.

Through this period, the central government budget balance saw a deficit of 78.5 billion Turkish liras ($7.85 billion.)