Turkey's economic status looks healthy - Emerging Real Estate

Turkey's economic status looks healthy

14/05/2011

 Turkey’s economic status looks healthy

The Turkish Government has revealed that the country’s economy is doing rather well by reporting its first budget surplus in 28 years for January and February 2011.

Unlike countries suffering through budget deficits and the associated painful spending cuts, Turkey is very much bucking the trend - in the first two months of this year the country experienced a state budget surplus of almost 1 billion Turkish lira (TL).  A year ago there was a deficit of TL 2.3billion so this is a remarkable turnaround, enabled in part by the falling cost of supporting the health and pensions system according to the Finance Ministry. Tax revenue also increased by over 30% in February from the previous year.

Finance Minister, Mehmet Simsek, confirmed it was the first time this had happened in 28 years and said “it is also the second time that there is a surplus in the budget for two consecutive months between the years 1970 and 2011. The first was seen in 1983 when the budget surplus was only TL 56,000”. This is good news for the Government as it says this confirms the AK Party in power has been economically successful and they hope that this boots their election hopes for this summer.

Indeed, the data does seem to confirm that fiscal discipline has been enforced and great news for Turkey’s economy, especially in such a difficult global climate, surely means good news for the Government who have overseen these results.