Credit program changed for infrastructure – Kommersant

The government is launching a program of special treasury loans to finance regional infrastructure projects, defining the rules for their issuance – we are talking about loans that will be provided at the expense of temporarily free funds from the unified federal budget account at 3% for up to 15 years. This measure is a somewhat reformatted continuation of infrastructure budget loans, but on a much smaller scale – we are talking about 190 billion rubles. Experts believe that the new structure allows financing projects without a significant increase in budget obligations – in the regions, such borrowings should still be in demand.

The White House has completed preparations for the launch of a new stage of budgetary support for regional infrastructure projects – the government approved the rules for issuing special treasury loans at 3% for up to 15 years. Such loans will be provided to the regions, in particular, for the construction, reconstruction and repair of transport, social and communal infrastructure, connection to networks and the purchase of passenger transport rolling stock. Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin announced yesterday that 190 billion rubles are provided for the implementation of this program. As Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin clarified, 75 billion rubles. distributed on a competitive basis, 50 billion rubles. will allocate 30 billion rubles for the renewal of the bus fleet in municipalities, 30 billion rubles for the development of Far Eastern cities, 25 billion rubles for projects in the annexed regions, and 10 billion rubles for the conversion of boiler houses to biofuel.

Special treasury loans, in fact, are a continuation of the current program of infrastructure budget loans (IBK). Recall that CIBs were distributed last year on approximately the same conditions (3% per annum, but for a period of at least 15 years), but then it was a much larger amount – 1 trillion rubles. In 2022, the regions received 250 billion rubles of this amount, and from the beginning of this year, another 62 billion rubles. On the need to extend this program with the allocation until 2030 of 250 billion rubles. per year were declared in the construction block of the government – in particular, due to the fact that the regions submitted applications for an amount twice the limit. However, this caused concern among the Ministry of Finance due to the risks of an increase in the debt load of the regions (see Kommersant dated August 4, 2022) – as a result, the authorities settled on allocating an additional limit in 2023.

The mechanism itself was slightly reformatted – if within the framework of the CIB funds were allocated directly from the budget, now we are talking about providing loans from temporarily free funds from the unified account of the federal budget (see Kommersant of February 8). According to the rules, regions can start repaying the main debt on such loans from the third year of using borrowed funds – early repayment is also possible.

After the approval of the rules, the authorities should proceed to the selection of the projects themselves – the decision, as before, will be made by the government commission for regional development. According to the office of the Deputy Prime Minister, the Territorial Development Fund “has already worked out the applications of the regions – they are ready to apply for participation in the selection.” According to the fund, there are now more than 500 projects in operation in 77 regions – the potential need for their financing, however, is not voiced.

As Nikita Andrievsky, chief specialist of the budget policy direction of the CSR, notes, the use of free funds from the single account of the federal budget will make it possible to finance projects “without a significant increase in spending obligations” of the treasury. From the point of view of the regions, says Ilya Tsypkin, an expert at the ACRA sovereign and regional ratings group, loans will be in demand, since they will be issued at a rate below inflation, while “in every subject you can find an infrastructure project that needs financing.” Perhaps, Nikita Andrievsky suggests, “part of last year’s projects that did not receive the CIB will be implemented on a priority basis.”

Ilya Tsypkin notes that the new loan obligations “will not aggravate the situation with the regions’ debt burden”: 190 billion rubles is less than 10% of the total volume of budget loans (1.9 trillion rubles at the beginning of the year). Nikita Andrievsky agrees with this: “This could increase the debt burden of the regions by only 1.2 percentage points, from 20.2% at the end of 2022 to 21.4%.” At the same time, adds Ilya Tsypkin, in most regions large repayments on budget loans of all types begin in 2025, but there are frequent cases of prolongation of obligations to pay such debt – in this regard, he does not exclude that “the federal center can make concessions and allow spread the repayment over a longer period.

Evgenia Kryuchkova