Secretary of Finance Richard D. “Ric” Brown said Wednesday that he remains hopeful that revenue collections will recover this month after a disappointing April, but he acknowledged that any reduction in anticipated revenues in this fiscal year means the state will have to “make it up in the next.”

“It’s worked in the past,” he said of agency efforts to curtail discretionary spending to cushion future cuts.

The two-year budget anticipates a surplus of more than $265 million in the fiscal year that ends June 30 to carry forward into the first year of the next biennium. But by the end of April, general fund revenues had grown 1.3 percent, well behind the projected 3.2 percent projection for the full fiscal year.

“While we expect to be able to close a portion of the current gap before the end of the fiscal year, it is not likely that we will collect any surplus revenues,” Reagan wrote.

The 1.9 percent lag in revenue growth at the end of April represented a shortfall of about $347 million, but Brown expressed confidence that the gap has narrowed with improved collections of income taxes in the first weeks of May.

“The numbers have improved,” he said Wednesday.