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BELGRADE, Jan 26 (Reuters) - Serbia posted a higher-than-expected fiscal gap last year but has no immediate plan to revise down the 2009 budget because of falling revenues and an economic slowdown, the Finance Minister said on Monday.
The 2008 consolidated fiscal gap hit 3.0 percent of GDP, exceeding a 2.7 percent target for the year, with most of the deficit generated by local governments, Diana Dragutinovic said.
"The (central) budget deficit remained in line with the plan," Dragutinovic told reporters on a sidelines of a business forum. "But the biggest deficit was made in December."
According to the ministry's figures, the 2008 budget gap stood at 54.6 billion dinars ($213.3 million), nine billion dinars more than originally planned.
But even though preliminary figures for January showed deteriorating revenue collection, it was still too early to trim the 2009 budget, she said.
"Budget revenues in January are not exactly encouraging," she said. "But January has traditionally been a bad month and it is still early to make forecasts for the whole year."
Central bank warnings that growth in the last quarter of 2008 had already fallen to around 2.0 percent were still no reason to cut the 2009 budget, she said. "Based on the first sign of slowing economic activity we do not need to think immediately about revising down the budget," she said. "But I will not exclude the budget revision."
The government adopted in December a 748.3 billion dinar budget, or 8.5 billion euros, targeting a fiscal gap of 1.75 percent of GDP, in line with a $520 million stand-by loan approved by the International Monetary Fund earlier this month.
Lower revenue collection is also expected to weigh on government spending this year, she said. The government has based the 2009 budget on an expected 1.7 billion euros ($2.20 billion) in foreign investment.
Of this, 400 million euros should come from Russia's Gazprom Neft for a 51 percent stake in NIS oil monopoly, but the money will probably arrive in the second half of 2009, postponing the financing of big infrastructure projects, she said. (Reporting by Gordana Filipovic; Editing by Adam Tanner and Andy Bruce)