Off the wire
• Urgent: Gold lower on Greece optimism, strong U.S. dollar  • Number of displaced inside Yemen tops 1 million: UN relief wing  • Inter-Libyan peace dialogue resumes in Algeria  • Ebola sequencing data released to global scientific community  • U.S. private sector adds 201,000 jobs in May  • Dubai moves higher in global city visitors ranking  • Austrian steel giant voestalpine invests record 1.18 bln euros in 2014-2015  • Jordan says US-led coalition making progress against IS  • Czech gov't approves bill on banning smoking in restaurants completely  • 1st LD Writethru: UN chief sets up external review of UN's handling of alleged child sex abuse in CAR  
You are here: 　 Home

Ireland's exchequer returns ahead of target in May

Xinhua, June 4, 2015 Adjust font size:

Ireland's exchequer returns in May continued to increase ahead of target, according to the Department of Finance on Wednesday.

The exchequer returns for the year to May showed a surplus of 641 million euros (about 725 million U.S. dollars) was recorded in the first five months of this year, compared to a deficit of 3.5 billion euros in the same period of last year.

The improvement in the exchequer balance is mainly driven by increased tax and non-tax receipts and a number of one-off transactions and inflows from the banking sector, the Irish department said.

Tax revenues of 17.3 billion euros were collected to the end of May 2015. This represents a year-on-year increase of 10.9 percent and is 4.4 percent above profile. Tax revenues for the month of May were up 5.1 percent against the monthly profile.

Meanwhile, non-tax revenues of 2.2 billion euros were collected, up 28.3 percent in year-on-year terms. The primary reason for this is the increased surplus income from the country's central bank, it said.

On the expenditure side, overall net voted expenditure for the year to May was 1.8 percent or 306 million euros below profile and 165 million euros or 1 percent lower in year-on-year terms.

The country's debt servicing costs were 3.4 billion euros, a year-on-year decrease of 111 million euros or 3.2 percent, largely reflecting the impact of early repayments to the International Monetary Fund. (1 euro = 1.13 U.S. dollars) Endit