Abstract:

The Covid-19 outbreak has adversely affected many macroeconomic indicators. One of these indicators is the central government budget. The aim of this study is to examine the effect of the epidemic on the central government budget in Turkey. For this reason, the effect of the epidemic has been tried to be revealed by focusing on the 5-year changes in the budget items. As a result of the study, it was observed that there were increases in public expenditures and public revenues. The reasons for the increase in public expenditures are the expenditures made within the scope of the fight against the epidemic and inflation. The reasons for the increase in public revenues are inflation, fiscal drift, the monitoring of price changes by indirect taxes, and the policy measures taken. However, due to the fact that public revenues did not increase as much as public expenditures, the budget deficit increased during the epidemic period. As a result, an increase was observed in interest expenses.

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