Cheap and strict – Newspaper Kommersant No. 23 (7468) dated 02/08/2023
[ad_1]
Regions in 2023 may receive a new mechanism for obtaining loans from the federal budget – to give them special treasury loans from temporarily free funds of the treasury, Andrei Makarov, the head of the State Duma Budget Committee, proposed. It is assumed that such loans will be issued for up to 15 years and at 3% per annum for the implementation of infrastructure projects. It is expected that these funds will help increase investment – the regions will be able to spend them on infrastructure in excess of the limits of budget commitments. The total amount of such loans in 2023 will be up to 250 billion rubles, which can be comparable to the profitability of the Treasury from managing the liquidity pool in a single account.
The head of the State Duma Committee on Budget and Taxes, Andrey Makarov, submitted to the State Duma a draft amendment to the Budget Code, which provides for the emergence in 2023 of a new type of budget loans – special treasury loans. We are talking about loans for infrastructure purposes at 3% and for a period of up to 15 years. To clarify, regions can also receive existing infrastructure loans at the same rate, but for a period of 15 years or more.
Kommersant’s interlocutor in the State Duma clarified that the specific goals of the loans will be established by agreement with the regions, but in any case they will be directed to infrastructure. The explanatory note to the draft refers to President Vladimir Putin’s order to increase the budget by 250 billion rubles. limits on the provision of budget loans to regions for infrastructure projects with high socio-economic efficiency.
The Treasury will issue new loans from temporarily free funds on a single account of the federal budget. Recall that after the launch of the system of treasury payments, the treasury transferred “to its side” all the calculations of the participants in the budget process. This allows you to consolidate all budget liquidity and increase income from the placement of temporarily free funds (for the three quarters of 2022, the regions received 135.9 billion rubles of such additional income).
To replenish the liquidity pool, the draft law proposes to transfer to treasury accounts in 2023 all balances of budget investments from settlement accounts in banks as of the beginning of 2023 and transfer subsidies provided to banks. As a result, the Treasury’s income from the placement of temporarily free funds can be comparable to the amount of new special treasury loans allocated.
According to the amendments, the regions will be able to exceed the established limits of public debt and their budget deficit by the amount of these loans. If the region does not repay the special treasury loan or does not pay interest on it on time, then the debt can be recovered from the tax revenues of the region or the funds that were planned to be transferred to it.
Note that the new mechanism may be a compromise to provide regions with a limited opportunity to exceed their spending over budget limits – this barrier, we recall, is one of the reasons for the recent moratorium proposed by the Federation Council on the norms of the law on public procurement (44-FZ) in order to expand the freedom of regions in the process their spending. However, the prospect of taking even cheap treasury loans, but with the corresponding strict treasury control, may cause less enthusiasm among governors.
The bill must be considered in the first reading before February 14, while it is sent for approval to the presidential administration, the government, the Accounts Chamber, committees and commissions of the State Duma. In the government apparatus, Kommersant was told that they had just received the bill. The Ministry of Finance and the Treasury did not respond to Kommersant’s request yesterday. A Kommersant source in the State Duma said that the initiative was discussed with the financial bloc of the government and the conceptual idea was agreed there.
[ad_2]
Source link