The north’s ‘parliament’ on Friday night passed its ‘state’ budget for 2025, with 29 votes in favour and nine votes against.
The budget foresees a total of 136.28 billion TL (€3.75bn) worth of ‘government’ spending, and a budget deficit of 17.6bn TL (€484 million).
This fact was picked up on by ‘finance minister’ Ozdemir Berova, who said while the budget was in the committee stage that it is the ‘government’s’ aim to “put into effect revenue-increasing measures” to reduce the budget deficit and produce a balanced budget by the year 2027.
He had described the budget as “a plan, a schedule, a roadmap”, and stressed the need for it to be prepared and used carefully.
“Our duty is to ensure that our country’s resources are effectively distributed,” he added.
However, not everyone was convinced by the figures offered, with ‘parliamentary’ finance committee deputy chairman and opposition party CTP ‘MP’ Erkut Sahali telling the committee last month that according to his calculations, the budget deficit may well exceed the ‘government’s’ forecasts and reach as high as 50bn TL (€1.37bn).
One noteworthy element in this year’s budget is the greatly increased budget for Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar’s office, largely on account of the new palace into which he is imminently set to move.
For example, the cost of insuring the current palace, which has housed the highest-ranking Turkish Cypriot politician in various capacities since 1960, stood at 292,000TL (€8,077) in 2024. Next year, however, the new building will cost 10.5m TL (€290,430) to insure.
The current palace’s yearly cleaning budget was 2.9m TL (€80,241) for this year, but this has been forecast to rise to 9.9m TL (€273,834), and while the old building’s yearly electricity bill stood at 7.7m TL (€212,892) this year, that has been forecast to rise to a whopping 141.8m TL (€3.9m) at the new palace next year.
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