The surplus hit EUR 181m at the end of June; the adopted budget documents for 2018 forecast a surplus of EUR 51m for the whole year, follows from a budget implementation report released by the government on Thursday.
If the trend continues, the surplus is projected to reach EUR 227m at the end of the year.
In January-June, budget revenue, at EUR 4.75bn, was 4.4% higher than in the same period last year, whereas expenditure grew at a slower pace, 1.8%, to EUR 4.57bn.
Revenue was buoyed by a 6.9% increase in tax revenue, the main source of budget funds, mainly due to a solid labour market, higher consumption and better corporate performance.
On the expenditure side, the wage bill rose by 5.8% but interest payments declined by over 8% on the back of active debt management.
Public debt also declined considerably, dropping to 63% of GDP from 66.4% of GDP at the end of last year.
While the report stresses that the end-year figure may differ due to outstanding debt payments, new borrowing is not scheduled.
But a Fall in Business Confidence
According to a report from the Statistics Office, as also reported by the STA, the business confidence index dropped by 2.5 percentage points from June and by 1.2 point year-on-year to 10.6 percentage points in July.
The manufacturing sector saw a 1.1-point monthly decline and 1.2-point weakening at the annual level.
Compared to June, consumer confidence cooled by 0.7 points and the indicators were down in retail and construction industries by 0.6 points and 0.2 points, respectively.
Pessimism in the retail sector also weighed down on the sentiment at the annual level (-0.7 pp).
Meanwhile, the annual boost in consumer confidence and construction confidence had a positive impact on the business sentiment index (+0.4 pp and + 0.2 pp, respectively).
Services sector sentiment had no impact on the overall index.
The July survey by the Statistics Office put manufacturing confidence at the lowest level in two years.
The negative trend continues as the value of the indicator has not increased at the monthly level since January. A major limiting factor has been a shortage of skilled workers.
