Budget according to deferred rules - Newspaper Kommersant No. 176 (7377) dated 09/23/2022

Budget according to deferred rules - Newspaper Kommersant No. 176 (7377) dated 09/23/2022



The White House as a whole has completed the preparation of the budget for 2023 and its main parameters for 2024-2025. On Thursday, the budget package was approved at a government meeting and will go to the State Duma next week. The main results of the passage of the "forks" of the budget process: the new budget rule in the conditions of the forced maintenance of a high level of spending has been postponed until 2025, taxes on commodity exporters, as Kommersant warned, will be significantly increased due to the expected reduction in total revenues.

The main figures of the 2023 budget approved on Thursday by the government are as follows. Revenues are planned at 26.13 trillion rubles, which is 1.6 trillion less than expected this year (27.7 trillion rubles). Budget expenditures should amount to 29.06 trillion rubles, which is slightly more than this year's expenses (29 trillion rubles), which, we recall, have already increased by 4 trillion rubles compared to the initial level due to many new obligations.

Such a gap between revenues and expenditures will lead to a budget deficit next year in the amount of 2.9 trillion rubles, or 2% of GDP. This is twice the 1.1% of GDP from the June projections of the Ministry of Finance (see. "Kommersant" for June 21) and, as follows from the draft “Guidelines for the Budget, Tax, and Customs Tariff Policy” cited by state information agencies, it significantly exceeds the level of 0.9% of GDP, or 1.3 trillion rubles, predicted for this year.

Unlike this year, when the "hole" in the budget will be closed only at the expense of the NWF (the transition from the accumulated surplus to the deficit is taking place right now, in September, see below). "Kommersant" for September 13), in 2023 the Ministry of Finance hopes to do this through domestic borrowing.

The department's plans, taking into account the current situation in the financial markets, look quite optimistic. As follows from the Guidelines, in 2023 the Ministry of Finance wants to borrow 1.7 trillion rubles on the domestic market. Recall that the department returned to borrowing for modest amounts only this month after a seven-month break.

In such conditions of “incompressible” spending, the new budget rule, which became the subject of summer disputes, has been relegated to the distant year 2025 in the current rapidly changing conditions. As Finance Minister Anton Siluanov explained at a meeting on Thursday, the goal of the future application of the rule is the primary balance of the budget, when revenues will be equal to expenditures (excluding spending on public debt servicing). At the same time, such a comparison should not take into account all oil and gas revenues to the state treasury, only the basic ones, in the amount of 8 trillion rubles, and everything above, the Ministry of Finance intends to save in the National Welfare Fund.

"Above" is expected a little. As follows from their "Main Directions", next year there will be no replenishment of the NWF, in 2024 it will get 939 billion rubles, in 2025 - 656 billion rubles. The Ministry of Finance makes these calculations based on the URALS oil price determined by the Ministry of Economy for 2023 in the new macro forecast (see below). "Kommersant" for September 22), at $70.1 per barrel, which roughly corresponds to its current dynamics (in August, the actual cost of the Russian variety was $74.7 per barrel).

Another piece of news, besides the actual postponement of the fiscal rule, was the confirmation of the White House's plans to increase the burden on commodity exporters. In order to collect the planned revenues in the face of the risks posed by the planned oil embargo and EU attempts to limit profits from energy exports for the Russian Federation, the government, as Kommersant has already reported, is raising taxes on the commodity sector (see. "Kommersant" for September 20). “The tax proposals take into account the fair withdrawal of part of the natural rent, which has increased as a result of changes in the world commodity price environment,” Anton Siluanov motivated the increase in the load on Thursday. He confirmed that they were talking about raising export duties on pipeline gas, withdrawing additional income from liquefied gas producers, imposing a duty on the export of fertilizers and thermal coal “in case high prices for these products persist”, as well as increasing the burden on the oil industry through maintaining the damper mechanism and increasing the base for the severance tax (in total, according to unconfirmed data, we can talk about withdrawing 1.4 trillion rubles from the sector).

Vadim Visloguzov



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