Russian federal budget deficit 3.7 trillion rubles or 1.7% of forecast 2025 GDP in H1

MOSCOW. July 7 (Interfax) - The Russian federal budget had a January-June 2025 deficit of 3.694 trillion rubles or 1.7% of forecast GDP for the year according to preliminary estimates, the Finance Ministry said in a monthly brief.

The planned federal budget deficit for the year was 1.173 trillion rubles or 0.5% of GDP but adopted spring amendments to the budget increased the planned deficit to 3.792 trillion rubles or 1.7% of GDP.

There was a deficit of 3.393 trillion rubles or 1.5% of forecast GDP for January-May, according to preliminary data. The Federal Treasury said there was a federal budget deficit of 3.029 trillion rubles for 5M.

There was a deficit of around 300 billion rubles for June, going by the MinFin's data for 5M 2025, and a deficit of 665 billion rubles going by the Federal Treasury's data.

Federal budget revenue grew 2.8% year-on-year to 17.585 trillion rubles in H1 2025.

Expenditure grew 20.2% to 21.278 trillion rubles.

The current deficit is mainly due to the advanced financing of expenditures in January, as well as a drop in oil and gas revenues, but it will not affect structural balance targets for 2025 as a whole, the ministry said.

Non-oil revenue grew 12.7% in H1 2025 to 12.85 trillion rubles, as planned. Sales tax revenue including VAT rose 7.1%. VAT revenue grew 7.3%, to 6.999 trillion rubles.

Oil and gas revenue fell 16.9% year-on-year to 4.735 trillion rubles in H1, principally due to a fall in the average oil price. Oil and gas revenue is so far higher than the base level of 4.487 trillion rubles, but is at risk of decreasing due to weaker price environment, the Finance Ministry said.

Expenditure has been slowing since February - it grew 12.9% year-on-year in February-June - after accelerated growth to 64.1% in January 2025, due to contracts being signed promptly and advance financing for selected contractual expenses.