Washington, Jul 13 (IANS): The US federal government registered a budget deficit of about $59.7 billion in June, sharply lower than the previous month, the US treasury department reported.

The federal government raked in a revenue of $260.2 billion, 44 percent higher than the previous month. It registered outlays of $319.9 billion last month, up 4.8 percent from the level of May, said the department Thursday.

The combined budget deficit in the first nine months of the 2012 fiscal year starting in October 2011 totaled $904.2 billion, 6.8 percent lower than the imbalance for the same period of last fiscal year. Revenues were up 5.2 percent through June, reported Xinhua.

However, the country is still on track for a deficit of over $1 trillion for the fourth consecutive fiscal year.

The Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan budgetary and economic research agency for the US Congress, predicted that the federal government would run a budget deficit of about $1.17 trillion in the current fiscal year which ends Sep 30, a slight reduction from the $1.3 trillion budget gap recorded in the 2011 fiscal year.