Russian federal budget deficit 4.9 trillion rubles or 2.2% of forecast 2025 GDP in 7M, above plan for year

MOSCOW. Aug 7 (Interfax) - The Russian federal budget had a January-July 2025 deficit of 4.879 trillion rubles or 2.2% of GDP and more than the forecast deficit 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 3.694 trillion rubles or 1.7% of GDP for January-June, according to preliminary data. There was a deficit of around 1.185 trillion rubles for July, going by these MinFin data.

The 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.

Federal budget revenue grew 2.8% year-on-year to 20.315 trillion rubles in 7M 2025.

Non-oil revenue grew 14% in 7M 2025 to 14.793 trillion rubles, as planned. Sales tax revenue including VAT rose 6.7%. VAT revenue grew 6.9%, to 7.837 trillion rubles.

Oil and gas revenue fell 18.5% year-on-year to 5.522 trillion rubles in 7M, principally due to a fall in the average oil price. Oil and gas revenue is higher than the base level of 5.315 trillion rubles, but is still at risk of decreasing due to weaker price environment, the Finance Ministry said.

Budget expenditure grew 20.8% to 25.194 trillion rubles in 7M. Expenditure has been slowing since February - it grew 14.9% year-on-year in February-July - after accelerated growth to 64.1% in January 2025, due to contracts being signed promptly and advance financing for selected contractual expenses.

The spring amendments approved budget revenue at 38.506 trillion rubles and expenditure at 42.299 trillion rubles for the year.