Oct. 3 (Bloomberg) -- The Czech central state budget deficit widened from a year ago to 78 percent of the full-year plan in the January-September period as revenue declined.

The central state budget, the biggest part of public finances that serve as the fiscal yardstick for assessing a European Union member’s readiness to adopt the euro, had a shortfall of 105.1 billion koruna ($5.6 billion) in the first nine months of the year, more than the 99.6 billion-koruna gap in the same period of 2010.

Revenue totaled 741.9 billion koruna, 4.1 billion koruna less than a year ago. Expenditure was 847 billion koruna, compared with 845.5 billion koruna. The government’s plan to narrow the public-finance deficit to less than the EU’s limit of 3 percent of economic output by 2013 has helped Czech five-year bonds outperform German debt with a similar maturity in the past year.

The government plans to narrow the overall fiscal gap to 3.5 percent of gross domestic product in 2012, from a planned 4.2 percent in 2011.

--Editor: Douglas Lytle

To contact the reporter on this story: Peter Laca in Prague at placa@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Balazs Penz at bpenz@bloomberg.net