ANKARA
The Turkish Treasury on Friday has posted a cash balance deficit of 14.1 billion Turkish liras ($6.2 billion) for the first 10 months of this year, the Treasury said in a statement on Friday.
According to provisional cash balance figures, the Treasury’s cash revenues were 340.3 billion Turkish liras ($150.6 billion), while its expenditures, including interest payments were 361.6 billion ($159.5 billion).
There was an extraordinary interest expense of 43.4 billion Turkish liras ($19.2 billion) that pushed up the deficit, the Treasury said. Treasury also received 7.5 billion ($3.3 billion) from a privatization during the 10-month period.
In October, the Turkish Treasury also posted a cash balance deficit of 4.9 billion Turkish liras ($2.15 billion),
The Treasury’s cash revenue was 33.3 billion Turkish liras ($14.7 billion) for the month, while its expenditures, including 6.8 billion Turkish liras ($3 billion) in interest payments, were 38.2 billion Turkish liras ($16.9 billion).
Separately, Turkey’s Treasury plans to pay back 128.8 billion Turkish liras, or $58 billion of domestic debt, including 21.5 billion Turkish liras, or $9.7 billion of foreign debt by next year, according to a statement on the Treasury website on Oct. 3.
The share of foreign-exchange linked debt in the central government’s debt stock decreased to 32 percent as of September 2014, compared with 58 percent at the beginning of 2003, the Treasury said.
The Treasury had announced on August 20 that the central government's debt stock stood at 590.2 billion Turkish liras ($261billion) at the end of July. Most of the debt, 408.2 billion Turkish liras ($180.7 billion), was in Turkish currency and 181.9 billion Turkish liras ($80.3 billion) was in foreign currency.
On Wednesday, the Turkish prime minister said Turkey would maintain strict budget discipline in every way before the 2015 general elections
Ahmet Davutoglu vowed his government would not engage in extra public spending to try to garner votes in next year's polls, which are scheduled for June of next year.
Davutoglu also announced on Thursday an extensive economic reform plan ( nine packages and 25 structural reforms) aimed at increasing the production capacities of the real sector and limiting Turkey's dependence on imports.
Turkey aims to increase its GDP to $1.3 trillion by 2018 from $820 billion in 2013, to reduce its current account deficit from to 5.2 percent from 7.9 percent. and to reduce the unemployment rate to 7 percent from 9.8 percent under the economic reform plans.
The country's Finance Ministry expects public expenditures to increase to 436.3 billion Turkish lira ($220 billion) in 2014. Revenue is to increase by 4 percent to 403.2 billion lira ($184.6 billion), leaving Turkey with a public budget deficit of 33.2 billion lira ($14.6 billion).
The country's deficit stood at 18.4 billion Turkish lira ($8.3 billion) last year.
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