Turkey's budget deficit at $7.4 billion for 2015

Turkey's government ran a 22.6 billion Turkish Liras ($7.4 billion) budget deficit last year, Turkey's finance minister announced in a press conference Jan. 15. 

The amount was 1.2 percent of the country's GDP, and less than 2 billion liras ($656 million) than was forecast for 2015, Naci A?bal said.

"We can say that last year was very successful in terms of budget revenue performance," he said. 
"The general government budget in 2015 will be a balanced budget and will be one of best performances in the last nine years," A?bal said. 

The December budget deficit was 17.1 billion liras ($5.6 billion), with interest payments and personnel expenses such social insurance payments taking up a large part of revenue, A?bal said. 

According to the ministry, Turkey's government budget revenue reached 483.4 billion liras ($158.7 billion) in 2015, a 13.6 percent increase compared to 2014.

 Budget expenditures for last year rose to 506 billion liras ($166.1 billion), marking a 12.8 percent increase year-on-year. Interest expenses stood at 53 billion liras ($17.4 billion) in that period, a 6.2 percent of increase from the previous year. The ministry estimated that budget expenses for the 2016 fiscal year would total 570.5 billion liras ($188 billion), up by almost 10 percent compared to the 520.4 billion liras ($170.8 billion) forecast for 2015.

"We forecast that the deficit will hit 1.2 percent of gross domestic product in 2016," A?bal said. 

"We forecast the ratio of debt stock to GDP at 32.6 percent by the end of 2015. With this figure, we achieved a 0.9-point improvement compared to 33.5 percent in 2014," he added. 

The biggest share of the budget was allocated to the Education Ministry with 109.3...