The Turkish government ran a monthly fiscal gap of 29.7 billion lira ($4 billion) in July, bringing the deficit in the first seven months of the year to 139.1 billion lira ($21.3 billion), Bloomberg reported.
That compares with a surplus of 9.9 billion lira in July 2019 and a 123.7 billion lira deficit for all of last year.
Budget revenues of the country rose 9 percent year-on-year, reaching 541.9 billion Turkish lira ($82.8 billion) between January and July, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.
Spurred by the coronavirus pandemic, the country’s budget expenditures hit 681.1 billion Turkish lira ($104 billion) in the same period, up 21 percent on an annual basis.
The budget balance, excluding interest payments, posted a deficit of 59.4 billion Turkish lira ($9.1 billion).
Tax revenues amounted to 412 billion Turkish lira ($63 billion), while interest payments were 79.7 billion Turkish lira ($12.2 billion) in the same period.
In July the budget balance registered a deficit of 29.7 billion Turkish lira ($4.3 billion). Turkey’s budget revenues totaled 86.5 billion Turkish lira ($12.6 billion) last month, down 7 percent from July 2019.
Budget expenditures in the month totaled at 116.2 billion Turkish lira ($16.9 billion), up 39 percent compared to the same month last year.
Excluding interest payments, the central government budget balance saw a gap of 21.2 billion Turkish lira ($3.1 billion) last month.
The average US dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate in July was 6.87, while one dollar traded around 6.55 lira on average in January-July 2020.
