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Bulgaria Finance Ministry reports 120M leva Budget deficit in May

Thu, Jul 02 2009 11:09 CET byAlex Bivol 750 Views
Bulgaria Finance Ministry reports 120M leva Budget deficit in May

Photo: Julia Lazarova

Bulgaria's consolidated Budget had a deficit of 120.1 million leva in May, Finance Ministry data showed on July 2. The Budget surplus for the first five months of the year was 555.4 million leva, down from 675.5 million a month earlier.

The Budget surplus in January was 907.3 million leva, but has steadily declined since then. The only other month in which the Budget recorded a surplus was April, when one-off tax receipts gave the revenue side a boost.

Opposition parties have accused the cabinet of intentionally inflating the surplus by delaying VAT refunds for months.

The Finance Ministry reports Budget data for a given month on the last day of the following month, but was late with May data. Martin Dimitrov, one of the leaders of the centre-right opposition Blue Coalition, accused the ministry of intentionally delaying the publication of the data until after Parliament elections on July 5, Dnevnik daily reported.

Dimitrov, who had obtained the data before it was officially published, made it public at a meeting with bloggers, the daily said.

Budget revenue in the first five months of the year was 11.04 billion leva, 6.1 per cent short of the amount collected in the same period of 2008. Spending has increased by 24.1 per cent to 10.49 billion leva.

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