August 30 (SeeNews) - Serbia's consolidated budget deficit for the first seven months of 2016 narrowed by 97.6% year-on-year to 934.1 billion dinars ($8.5 million/7.6 million euro), the country's finance ministry said.
Total consolidated budget revenues grew 9.5% on the year to 1.045 trillion dinars in January-July, while spending increased 5.3% to 1.046 trillion dinars, data posted on the website of the ministry on Monday showed.
Tax revenues rose 10.1% to 909.6 billion dinars, non-tax revenues grew 5.2% to 131.7 billion dinars, and grants jumped 14.7% to 3.98 billion dinars.
On the expenditure side, current expenditure climbed 3.3% to 956.8 billion dinars, while capital expenditure soared 41.8% to 66.2 billion dinars.
In July alone, Serbia reported a budget surplus of 17.3 billion dinars, based on revenues of 169.8 billion dinars and expenditure of 152.5 billion dinars
Serbia's non-consolidated budget showed a surplus of 22 billion dinars in January-July, compared to a deficit of 24.2 billion dinars in the same period last year. Officials recently said that the 2016 budget, which envisages a deficit of 121.8 billion dinars, equal to 4% of GDP, might be revised to reflect better-than-expected performance to date.
"Huge undershooting for the first seven months has been largely supported by the economy growth which the government did not encounter, initially forecasting GDP to grow by 0.5% that was afterwards upgraded to 2.5%," Raiffeisen Research said in a daily note on Tuesday. "Hence, the outstanding budget performance was to a lesser extent supported by the cost saving policy in place and to a larger amount to the unexpectedly healthy VAT and excises growth. Furthermore, some delays in the public companies restructuring, bearing certain costs, added to such good result, as well."
In 2015, Serbia’s consolidated budget deficit contracted to 149.1 billion dinars from 258.1 billion dinars a year earlier.
(1 euro=123.142 dinars)