Big shortfall in March tax revenues

Budget revenues slumped last month, official figures from the Finance Ministry showed on Friday, as they posted a shortfall of more than 1 billion euros. However, on a quarterly level the revenue gap was contained at just 69 million euros as the state cashed in the Bank of Greece dividend of 775 million euros in February.

The big shortfall is seen in tax takings, which is what keeps leading the country’s creditors to demand further measures, as tax collectibility has been dramatically reduced. This means that for each euro the state needs to collect, the government must impose a tax of more than 1.2 euros.

March data showed that the sum of the state budget’s net revenues amounted to 2.9 billion euros, missing the monthly target by 1 billion euros. Expenditure last month camer to 3.9 billion euros, 651 million euros off the monthly target.

Spending by the Public Investments Program came to 220 million euros, saving 65 million from March’s budget.

Provisional ministry figures showed that the primary surplus in the first quarter of the year amounted to 2.6 billion euros, or 1.6 billion euros more than the budget target.