Named the main merit of Siluanov as head of the Ministry of Finance

Precisely for his 60th birthday, Anton Siluanov received a gift of exceptional importance for himself: the deficit of the Russian treasury decreased by 180 billion rubles in March, amounting to “only” 2.4 trillion in the first quarter. Although experts predicted a figure of 3-4 trillion. What could be more pleasant for an official and a professional whose purpose of activity is, in fact, one thing – to ensure macroeconomic stability?

“The state is me,” the French monarch Louis XIV de Bourbon allegedly remarked. The current head of the Russian Ministry of Finance has the right to say: “The budget is me,” and there will not be much exaggeration. Possessing an analytical mindset and an excellent memory for numbers, Siluanov actually lives by indicators of government revenues and expenditures, sincerely worrying about the fate of every penny. In his decisions, he is autonomous and unbending, and if Siluanov says “no”, this means that no one will receive money, regardless of lobbying opportunities.

Anton Siluanov is a hereditary financier. His parents worked in the Ministry of Finance (his father headed one of the departments), and, according to rumors, even his grandfather. The character of the minister is clearly strong, the mood to overcome obstacles is invariably high. The former dean of the Faculty of Finance and Credit, Boris Suprunovich (at the Moscow Financial Institute, where Siluanov studied), recalls: “Anton was not a ringleader on the course, but he did not break away from the team: he went to harvest potatoes and participated in meetings. He studied well. It was noticeable that the world of numbers is his element. Most of all, Siluanov surprised me when, in his last year, he asked to be sent to work in the Ministry of Finance of the RSFSR by distribution. At that time, our graduates did not aspire to go there – the salary is low, the work is boring, and the department itself had practically no influence.

But today the influence of the Ministry of Finance is abundant, and here the merit of the minister, who has proved his professional viability, is clearly. Having come to the department as an ordinary economist, Siluanov became a leading employee a few years later, and then – deputy head of the financial department. From 1994 to 2011, he headed the macroeconomic policy department of the Ministry of Finance, and also served as deputy to Alexei Kudrin. Which in 2011 he replaced in the chair of the head of the ministry. The absolute priority for Siluanov in this capacity is the observance and execution of the budget, which forces him to adhere to a sometimes super-tough policy aimed at limiting government spending. Hence all the actions of Siluanov, including socially unpopular ones.

It was he who successfully pushed through the government the idea of ​​raising the retirement age according to a tough scenario, it was he who came up with the idea of ​​introducing a tax on the self-employed, which was eventually implemented by the Federal Tax Service. It was he who managed to turn the budget into a surplus, by systematically reducing the expenditure side and increasing the revenue. It was Siluanov who said that pensioners in Russia live too long (more than 22 years after retirement), and that working pensioners do not need indexation, because they have a source of income …

“The main merit of the Ministry of Finance under Siluanov is ensuring macroeconomic stability,” says Nikita Maslennikov, a leading expert at the Center for Political Technologies. — For the financial department, this is a completely new quality associated with a very high level of interaction with the Central Bank (in monetary and fiscal policy), with inflation targeting and with a floating ruble exchange rate. This new monetary reality is caused by the 2014 sanctions. The Ministry of Finance under Siluanov improved the budget rule, which became more stringent, as well as more understandable and predictable for all economic agents. Another thing is that GDP growth rates remain potentially low.”

Under Siluanov, Maslennikov continues, much has been done to improve the efficiency of public spending. Measures to consolidate the federal budget, including in terms of financing national projects, providing support to the population and businesses, were fully implemented by the current Minister of Finance. In particular, during the 2020-2021 pandemic and in the 2022 sanctions. According to the expert, today the Ministry of Finance is maximally involved in the general context of economic policy, in the agenda of the most urgent structural reforms. There are several confirmations of this: in particular, since January 1, the unified Social Fund, the brainchild of the ministry, has been launched. Plus, thanks to an extremely balanced policy of government borrowing, Russia’s public debt to GDP ratio is one of the lowest in the world today. According to Maslennikov, one can also note a more rational interaction with the regions: even in the conditions of the current over-centralization, the Ministry of Finance managed to stabilize the budgets of many subjects of the Russian Federation.

“In Russia, there is a whole category of people who have been professionally criticizing Siluanov and the head of the Central Bank Elvira Nabiullina for their “liberalism” for years, says Aleksey Zubets, a professor at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation. – However, despite all the ups and downs, the heads of both regulators remain in their places, they manage to withstand very powerful lobbying pressure from various groups. And for this you need to have the will, mind and good qualifications. Acting in tandem and separately, they solve all their tasks for a solid five. In the case of Siluanov, this is, first of all, the collection of taxes, the administration of the financial system and filling the budget. The minister understands two things better than most opponents: firstly, how the Russian economy and its individual sectors work, and secondly, that excessive funding is fraught with inefficient use of funds.

As for Siluanov’s policy towards pensioners, one should not accuse him of callousness and stinginess. Simply because, Zubets concludes, there are not enough free resources in the federal budget for a radical increase and indexation of pensions.