How the sharp increase in the budget deficit at the end of 2022 will affect its sustainability

The government has summed up the preliminary results for 2022 for the federal budget: revenues amounted to almost 28 trillion rubles, and expenses – more than 31 trillion rubles, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov clarified that the budget was executed with a deficit of 3.3 trillion rubles, or 2.3% of GDP.

“But if we take into account the funds that we compensated extra-budgetary funds as a result of the deferral of insurance premiums, if we subtract these funds from the volume of expenditures, then the deficit amounted to 1.8% of GDP,” Siluanov said. Earlier, he said that the deferral of payment of insurance premiums in 2022 allowed the business to keep a total of 772 billion rubles in circulation.