The phrase "a modest surplus" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when discussing financial situations, budgets, or resources that exceed expenses or needs to a small degree.
Example: "After reviewing the annual budget, we found that we had a modest surplus that could be allocated for community projects."
Alternatives: "a small excess" or "a slight surplus".
Greece's budget should show a modest surplus of between 0.4% and 0.8% of GDP.
The Tories have a smaller deficit and the Lib Dems a modest surplus.
Just a few years ago, the state's economy was booming and there was a modest surplus in electricity.
Despite a sharp deterioration in the budgetary position in the final months of 2008, the full-year outturn is expected to show a modest surplus.
What if you kept just the entitlement programs and got rid of everything else? You'd have a modest surplus — about $109 billion.
Despite fewer riders, falling tax revenues and the political difficulties in Albany, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said on Wednesday that it would run a modest surplus through 2011.
But if the Coalition's reckoning is applied to those budget figures it would not return the budget to surplus until 2016-17, the same year Labor is forecasting a modest budget surplus.
He announced a modest budget surplus and a steady drop in unemployment.
And if we did that, that would achieve the economist test of sustainability, meaning it would get the deficit down to a modest primary surplus so the debt would start falling as a share of GDP.
Nevertheless, the aim is to run a modest budget surplus of 1.1% of GDP (EMU definition) by the end of the government's current term in 2011.The plan assumes that the economy will grow by 2% per year over the next four years, which is stronger than the average rate of recent years but below last year's growth rate of 2.9%.
In fact, all the new planting has created a modest grape surplus, which means that winemakers seeking high quality can be pickier about the grapes they use, relegating the substandard stuff to lower-priced, lesser-quality wines.
