Ministry of Finance: 2024 budget will end with 3% deficit

The 2024 budget will conclude with a 3% deficit, the Ministry of Finance announced on January 2. Revenues will fall short by 6.1 billion BGN compared to expenditures. According to the Ministry’s estimates, neither the revenue nor the expenditure targets for the past year will be met.

Preliminary calculations from the Ministry of Finance indicate that revenue collection will reach 95.6% of the planned amount. This shortfall is primarily due to unreceived funds from the European Union, specifically the second and third tranches under the Recovery and Resilience Plan, which were not disbursed. The total amount of collected revenues, grants, and donations under the Consolidated Fiscal Program (CFP) is expected to reach 72 billion BGN.

"Tremendous efforts have been made both in terms of improving revenue collection and managing presure on expenditures. Despite an extremely tight budget, preliminary estimates indicate that Bulgaria's fiscal position aligns with the targets set under the CFP in the calculations for the State Budget Law of the Republic of Bulgaria for 2024, adopted at the end of 2023," the Ministry of Finance explained.

There has been an overachievement in tax revenue, with 58.7 billion BGN collected. Compared to 2023, revenues in this category increased nominally by 6.4 billion BGN (12.2%).

However, there has been an underperformance on the expenditure side, which will amount to 95.8% of the planned level, totaling 78.1 billion BGN.

"Compared to the previous year, there has been an increase primarily in social spending, due to higher pensions following the increases that took effect in July 2023 and July 2024, as well as in personnel costs following wage increases for educational staff and other administrative bodies," the Ministry added.

Bulgaria's contribution to the EU budget, paid by 31 December 2024 from the central budget, amounted to 1.6 billion BGN, in compliance with the current EU legislation on own resources.

The final data on budget execution will be published at the end of January.