Budget 2025, March and December with the highest receipts

2025-03-14 14:42:00, Ekonomi CNA

Budget revenues are following the economic cycle. The detailed budget revenue distribution plan shows that the highest revenues will be in March and December, with 67 and 70 billion lek each (see chart below).

The monthly distribution of this year's budget shows that the state treasury will increase its collections in value in the second half of the year, adapting to the economic cycle where consumption and investment activity intensifies in this period.

The data shows that compared to last year, there is a greater increase in the collection plan for the first months of the year.

For January 2025, 62 billion lek were scheduled to be collected, an increase of 13.6% from January 2024, but in fact over 64 billion lek were collected, or 18.5 percent more than last year. January collections were driven by an unusual increase in excise imports.

In January-April 2025, each month is scheduled to collect about 13 percent more than the same period in 2024. While from May to December, collections will increase by less than 10 percent.

Practices in recent years show that the budget program can change several times within a year.

In recent years, changes have favored the approval of additional budgets, as revenues have increased above forecast as a result of positive developments in tourism, which have influenced the overall increase in consumption in the economy.

While the budget revenue program has generally performed better than planned, on the other hand, the budget is suffering from the inability to spend public funds according to the program.

The year 2024 also ended with an unusual failure to implement the public spending program. With the latest changes to the normative act for 2024, 771.3 billion lek were planned to be spent, but only 728.5 billion lek were implemented, or 42.7 billion lek less than planned.

The underperformance of the spending plan comes at a time when the Albanian economy's financing needs are high. Our country still has a high infrastructure gap compared to the region and also has lower pensions and salaries compared to its neighbors. Albania's spending on health and education is the lowest in Europe in relation to GDP./ Monitor Magazine