Russian budget spending to total 32.2 trln rubles in 2023, well above target - Siluanov
MOSCOW. Dec 28 (Interfax) - Russian federal budget revenues and spending will exceed the figures in the budget law in 2023, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said.
"Revenue and expenditure figures are higher than planned. Revenues grew and expenditures grew; revenues, foremost oil and gas, by 3.1 trillion rubles. The plan for oil and gas was 8.93 trillion rubles, it might be about 9 trillion rubles," Siluanov told reporters on Wednesday.
For spending "it's clear where our main increases are," he said. "We planned a budget of 29 trillion rubles, but it will actually be 32.2 trillion rubles," Siluanov said.
"The overall amount of expenditures is growing. There is restructuring of expenditures, of course, but that's normal," he said.
"Did we cut any social or investment expenditures? This year we virtually didn't cut, didn't touch social spending at all. Nominally, all the planned objectives we had were virtually all fulfilled in the figures we planned, but relatively, as a percentage of total expenditures, yes, of course, they decreased in some places. But our total budget also increased, and next year it's increasing. So nominally, there's no reduction, and even growth for some items, the overall amount of spending is growing, and this is the source for all our objectives. Are we cutting current obligations? I'd probably put it this way - 90% we're not cutting, if in places we are then it's mainly optimizations that are negligible," Siluanov said.
National Welfare Fund
The minister also recalled that 2.9 trillion rubles from the National Welfare Fund (NWF) are being used to balance the budget this year.
"Before we used our current liquidity and balances on the treasury account. We can't, after all, carry over our balances after a year and take from our recipients, so everything we took will be compensated from the NWF," Siluanov said.
"We need to get through next year. We will take another 1.3 trillion rubles from the NWF next year to balance the budget. From 2025 we're planning that there won't be this transfer from the NWF," he said.
The NWF is expected to be topped up by 1 trillion rubles this year. Next year, the fund will be topped up at an Urals oil price of more than $60 per barrel.
"Optimistic price or not an optimistic price? In our view, a decent price level in general. Right now we have around $65-$66 per barrel. Overall, of course, we factored in oil at about $70 in our forecast and calculated the NWF top-up based on this. If it's not $70, if it's $60, that means there won't be any top-up," Siluanov said.
He said that "if there won't be money then we'll take from the NWF." The NWF's total liquid portion is 4.7 trillion rubles, part of which is earmarked for projects, but "if the situation with prices for energy resources is completely negative we will use the NWF," and "if we see that the balance is decreasing, then we'll take other balancing measures," Siluanov said, adding that in this case it will be possible to "work on the expenditure part some more."
Speaking about whether the government is considering scenarios where it might sell securities in which NWF money is invested, Siluanov said these are mainly Sberbank shares, "which bring us additional dividends, revenues. There's not really anything to sell there."