ASLIHAN ALTAY KARATAŞ / ANKARA - The 2027 Central Government Budget Law proposal, signed by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, was presented to the Presidency of the Turkish Grand National Assembly yesterday, in accordance with the Constitution. The largest share in the 2027 budget was again for education. There was a 229 percent increase in appropriations for weapons and ammunition purchases, which constitute a significant part of defense expenditures in the budget, and a 176 percent increase in urban transformation appropriations. Vice President Cevdet Yılmaz said, "Our 2027 budget is a 'resilience, welfare and transformation' budget that reinforces the security and resilience of our economy, transforms Turkey's production power and competitive capacity, and carries our gains to permanent social welfare."
At the meeting, where the traditional budget binding ceremony was also held, Yılmaz briefly said the following:
INCREASE IN URBAN TRANSFORMATION SHARE: An appropriation of 769 billion liras has been envisaged in 2027 to eliminate earthquake damage and increase resilience against disasters. In our 2027 budget, we are increasing urban transformation allowances by 176 percent to 276 billion lira.
GROWTH 4.2 PERCENT: We expect our economy, which grew by 3.7 percent in 2025, to complete 2026 with 3.3 percent growth. We predict that growth will increase to 4.2 percent in 2027. We predict that employment will increase by 657 thousand people due to the acceleration in growth.
INFLATION WILL DECREASE TO 21 PERCENT: We expect our total exports in 2026 to reach 410 billion dollars. The share of high and medium-high technology products in our manufacturing industry exports has approached 44 percent. We predict that the inflation rate, which dropped below 30 percent in September after a long time, will be 28.4 percent at the end of the year and will drop to 21 percent by the end of 2027.
We expect our national income to be 111 trillion lira next year. We predict that budget expenditures will be 27 trillion 276 billion liras and budget revenues will be 23 trillion 408 billion liras in 2027.
REVENUES: Sub-items of 2027 budget revenues are Income Tax 5 trillion 533 billion lira, Corporate Tax 2 trillion 223 billion lira, SCT 3 trillion 284 billion lira, VAT 5 trillion 681 billion lira, Other Tax Revenues 3 trillion 184 billion lira, Non-Tax Revenues 3 trillion 502 billion lira.
EXPENSES: The distribution of 2027 budget appropriations according to economic classification is Personnel expenses 7 trillion 117 billion lira, Expenses for the purchase of goods and services 2 trillion 184 billion lira, Current transfers 10 trillion 240 billion lira, Capital expenses 1 trillion 855 billion lira, Capital transfers 750 billion lira, lending expenses 613 billion lira, reserve appropriations 542 billion lira, interest expenses are 3 trillion 975 billion lira.
REAL SECTOR SUPPORT 769 BILLION: We see agriculture as a strategic sector and we allocate a total of 1 trillion 305 billion liras in our budget. We allocate 325 billion lira for agricultural credit support, 268 billion lira for agricultural sector investment allowances, and 235 billion lira for agricultural support programs. We foresee an appropriation of 658 billion liras in our budget for real sector supports, excluding agricultural loans subsidy support.
2.8 TRILLION FOR INVESTMENT: We are increasing the resources we allocate for investments in our 2027 budget to 2 trillion 849 billion liras. This amount corresponds to 10.4 percent of our budget.
It received a 13.7 percent share
We predicted an appropriation of 2 trillion 459 billion lira for the Ministry of National Education in the 2027 budget. We are increasing the budgets of higher education institutions to 872 billion liras in 2027. When we include higher education, we increase our education budget to 3 trillion 747 billion lira in 2027. Thus, we allocate the largest share of the budget, 13.7 percent, to education. We allocate 2 trillion 134 billion liras from the budget for health services. We allocated 1 trillion 341 billion lira in our 2027 budget for social aid and support. This corresponds to 4.9 percent of the budget.
The defense ecosystem is getting stronger
We minimize the foreign dependency of our defense industry ecosystem. A 229 percent increase was made in the appropriations for the purchase of weapons, ammunition, weapon systems and other defense tools, which constitute a significant part of defense expenditures in the Ministry of National Defense budget. We foresee a total appropriation of 3 trillion 454 billion lira for the defense and security sector, including 2 trillion 206 billion lira for total defense expenditures and 1 trillion 248 billion lira for internal security expenditures, along with other defense expenditures.
