ANKARA - Turkey and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) continued bargaining on ``primary surplus``, sources said on Tuesday.
Sources told A.A correspondent that economy management, during last week`s talks with the IMF, asked the Fund to exclude foreign-credit investments and investments by State Economic Enterprises (SEEs) from the primary surplus calculation in 2005. However, the same sources said, the IMF did not welcome this suggestion but said it ``would assess`` the proposal.
The sources said that if the foreign-credit investments were not excluded from the scope of the primary surplus, it might cause some problems.
Noting that Turkish authorities would prefer buying the planes to be purchased by Turkish Airlines (THY) through ``operational financial leasing`` in order to prevent it from being considered within the framework of the primary surplus calculation, the sources said that ``purchase of planes by another method might cause a deadlock``.
-2005 INVESTMENT BUDGET-
On the other hand, investments to be made from the general budget are expected to be around 8.1 quadrillion Turkish liras (TL) in 2005. (Note of the Editor: One dollar equals TL 1,500,000). This means that the investment fund will be increased by around 9 percent.
However economy management points out that the figures for 2005 were not definite yet, stressing that a definite figure will come out after talks with the IMF.
-PRIVATE INCOME, PRIVATE FUND-
It was learned that some private incomes like motorway incomes, educational fees and revolving fund incomes might be registered in the budget as ``private funds``.
Such private incomes were planned to be disbursed to institutions at the beginning of the year, sources said. The same sources added that in this case, budget investments would exceed the 9 quadrillion TL level.
(BRC-ULG) 05.10.2004