More money, less spending - 1.6% deficit

Ten months through the year, the general consolidated budget deficit amounted to 24,092bn ROL, accounting for 1.6% of the estimated Gross Domestic Product. The deficit scheduled for 2002 amounted to 3% of GDP.
Top performer was the profit tax collection, which reached 96.9% of the yearly target. At the same time, health insurance contributions were 88.5% collected.
The Finance Ministry has also made arrangements to overcome an increase in spending that might jeopardise the final target in the last two months. It is planning to use last year’s solution, that is freeze spending in certain cases.
The biggest underperformers at the end of the first ten months were the state budget and the social security budget, which registered 11,417bn ROL in deficit.
This is largely due to spending outstripping revenues as in the previous years.
The economic growth trend in the first ten months of the year came along with a lower than forecast inflation. These developments led to 27.5% increase in revenues and to 22.9% increase in spending, compared with the same time last year.
The state budget deficit amounted to 31,387bn ROL in the first ten months of the year, while the deficit registered for the social security budget reached 11,417bn ROL.
The health insurance fund registered nearly 3,800bn ROL in budget excess in the first ten months, whilst the amounts allocated from Special fund for energy system development were 274bn ROL lower than initially estimated.
The ministries have contracted 22,029bn ROL in foreign loans since early this year, and have spent only 75% in the meantime.
The Privatisation Authority budget posted more than 1,800bn ROL excess. The general consolidated budget revenues amounted to 363,038.8bn ROL, accounting for 80.5% of the yearly estimates, largely because of the state budget receipts, accounting for 83.9% of the yearly target, of the Special fund for energy system development receipts (84.2%), as well as of the health insurance budget receipts (86.4%).