RIYADH: Turkiye’s budget recorded a 1.37 trillion lira ($45.7 billion) deficit in 2023, up by 1.22 trillion lira from the previous year. Turkiye’s budget shortfall surged by 900 percent from 142.7 billion lira in the previous year, according to data released by the Ministry of Treasury and Finance. Actual revenues reached 5.21 trillion lira, while expenditures attained a total of 6.58 trillion lira. The substantial deficit can be attributed to the notable increase in the country’s expenditures, rising from 2.94 trillion lira in December 2022 to 6.58 trillion in the corresponding month of 2023. This surge is primarily due to the rise in current transfers, which include payments for social aid and to the nation’s state-run energy importer, soaring from 1.12 trillion lira in 2022 to 2.36 trillion lira in 2023. The allocations increased 111 percent in annual terms and accounted for more than a third of total spending, Bloomberg reported. For December, the budget balance showed a shortage of 842.5 billion lira, following a surplus of 75.6 billion lira in November. The country had witnessed an annual inflation rate nearing 65 percent in the last month of 2023, marking the highest for 2023 and setting the trajectory for an anticipated peak of 70-75 percent in May. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s newly appointed team of economists, known for their market-friendly approach, anticipates a decline in inflation within the next four months, despite the rate having reached an 85 percent high in October 2022 before temporarily receding and then steadily rising again. The official annual inflation rate for Turkiye rose to 64.77 percent in December 2023, compared to 61.98 percent in November of the same year. Notably, the month-on-month increase at 2.93 percent was the smallest in the last six months. Turkiye’s economy expanded by 5.9 percent in the third quarter of last year, driven by household spending. Still, activity was expected to slow through the year-end after aggressive monetary tightening to cool demand, according to Reuters. Gross domestic product grew 0.3 percent from the second quarter of 2023 on a seasonally and calendar-adjusted basis, data from the Turkish Statistical Institute showed.