BAKU, Azerbaijan, January 22. Azerbaijan's state budget deficit amounted to 883.7 million manat ($518.8 million) by the end of 2023, which is 67.68 percent or 1.8 billion manat ($1 billion) less than the upper limit of the deficit (2.7 billion manat ($1.5 billion)), Trend reports.
According to the Finance Ministry, last year's budget deficit-to-GDP ratio was 0.7 percent, 1.8 percent lower than expected.
The large reduction in the deficit to the forecast was primarily due to the fiscal authorities' provision of excess revenues to the state budget and the failure to meet a portion of the state budget expenditures totaling 166.3 million manat ($97.6 million) (0.5 percent).
The financing of the 2023 state budget deficit came at the expense of monies raised by last year's borrowing program (1.6 billion manat ($939 million)) and revenues from state property privatization (116 million manat ($68.1 million)).
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