Russia's budget deficit of 2010 might only be slightly below the forecast 5.3% of GDP - MinFin
MOSCOW. Nov 16 (Interfax) - Russia's federal budget deficit for 2010 will not be substantially below the level of 5.3% of GDP as stipulated in the budget law, the head of the Finance Ministry's Tax and Custom Tariff Policy Department, Ilya Trunin, told journalists on Tuesday.
"The deficit for the federal budget could be less than planned but I don't think that it would be lower by two times," Trunin said.
He added that making deficit forecasts for the year's results would be "very risky since everybody knows what is happening with budget implementation on expenditures at the end of the year." He noted that payments are being made on all signed contracts at year's end and daily budget expenditures exceed average annual expenditures considerably at the end of the year.
"Therefore, if we reflect the overtake in our revenue plans, this doesn't mean that expenditures will be less. We need to watch what happens in December with expenditures and, bearing this in mind, I don't think that the deficit will be substantially lower," he said.
He said that the increase in oil prices would probably not have much of an influence on the final deficit figure since increasing budget revenue from high oil prices is being used to economize resources in the Reserve Fund.