5 May (BNS)

At the Cabinet session on Thursday, the Estonian government got an overview of the budget inflow in the first three months of the year, according to which 1.5 million euros of revenue, or 26.7% of the target, flowed into the budget; of this 951.2 million euros were tax revenues and 570 million euros non-tax revenues.

The tax revenue that has flown into the budget accounts for 22.4% and non-tax revenue 39.2% of the target for the year, the Finance Ministry said.

In three months the sum total of expenditures was also 1.5 million euros, 24.8% of the budgetary target. According to preliminary data of the state accounts, the government sector budget position of the first two months of the year was 66 million euros or 0.4% of the gross domestic product short. This is 101 million euros less that in the same period last year.

As of the end of March the budget has been filling in as expected. Compared with the same period last year, 18.2% more revenue has been flowing in, mainly due to the bigger sale volume of emissions quotas. The 14.7% growth in expenditures compared with the same period last year was mainly due to transfer of the revenue from the sale of emissions quota between ministries.

Expenditures were made in the three months to the tune of 1.5 billion euros or 24.8% of the target. Without the transfer of the emissions quota revenue and expenditures made at the expense of foreign means, the Q1 expenditure was 3.9% higher than last year. This has mainly been due to bigger payments of social expenses that were made to the tune of a total of 610.5 million euros during the quarter.

In the three months 224.1 million euros, or 22.3%, of the money planned for the year were used for operating expenses of the state. The operating expenses of the three first months of 2011 have contracted by about 0.4% or one million euros compared with last year. Payments for personnel expenses were made to the tune of 129.9 million euros and for household expenses 94.2 million euros.

At the end of March there were 1.1 billion euros of liquid financial reserves or deposits and promissory notes in the state treasury, 49.6 million euros more than at of the end of last year.