Parties reported on income and expenses for the first quarter

The parties reported on income and expenses for the first quarter. Compared to last year, their income has increased slightly. However, this happened mainly at the expense of United Russia: the parliamentary opposition relies more on state funding, and non-parliamentary parties are learning to do without money.

The Central Election Commission has published information on the receipt and expenditure of funds from political parties in the first quarter of 2023. During this period, parliamentary parties receive state funding following the results of the elections to the State Duma (152 rubles for each vote received by the party list, funds are distributed based on the results of the campaign held in 2021). Traditionally, budget revenues play a major role in ensuring the life of parliamentary parties, and 2023 was no exception. Most of all – 4.27 billion rubles – received “United Russia”. As donations, the party collected seven times less (581 million rubles).

However, for the rest, with the involvement of extrabudgetary funds, the situation was even worse. Thus, the Communist Party received 1.62 billion rubles. state funding, and donations in total 4.33 million rubles. A Just Russia – For Truth (SRZP) earned 638.67 million rubles in the elections, while raising 3 million rubles in donations. The Liberal Democratic Party and the New People had almost no revenue in the first quarter, except for budgetary funds (646.34 million and 455.66 million rubles).

Of course, the budget funds received in the first quarter of the party are then spent throughout the year. However, according to the results of last year, state financing of United Russia amounted to more than half of the entire party budget – 4.3 billion out of 8.4 billion rubles. In the budget of the New People, the share of state money was 92% (456 million out of 493 million rubles), in the Communist Party of the Russian Federation – 94% (1.6 billion rubles with a total annual budget of 1.7 billion rubles). For the Liberal Democratic Party, this figure was slightly lower – 87% (646 million out of 740 million rubles in annual “earnings”). The highest share of public money was in the SRZP – 98% (639 million out of 653 million rubles received by the party treasury).

However, according to the results of this year, the share of budget funds in the overall structure of income may slightly decrease, at least in the first quarter, the parties were able to raise 544 million rubles in donations. more than during the same period in the past.

Basically, this growth is the merit of United Russia (in the first quarter it increased the volume of donations received by 538 million rubles). But non-parliamentary parties started the financial year not too actively. “Yabloko” declared receipts in the amount of 39.3 million rubles, the vast majority – donations from legal entities. The rest of the political associations could not collect more than 10 million rubles. The closest to this milestone was the Party of the Revival of Russia, which collected donations for 7 million rubles. In third place is the Russian Party of Pensioners for Social Justice with 5.8 million rubles. It is curious that PARNAS, liquidated on May 25 at the suit of the Ministry of Justice due to the lack of regional branches, received 1 million rubles in the first quarter. donations from individuals. Another nine parties declared zero revenues to the budget.

Traditionally, one of the largest expenditure items is the maintenance of regional branches and governing bodies of the party – for these purposes, party members spent a total of 442 million rubles in the fourth quarter of last year. United Russia has traditionally had the most expensive apparatus (300 million rubles were spent on it), the least of the parliamentary parties was spent on maintaining the New People apparatus – only 5.5 million rubles.

Despite the lifting of the quarantine, United Russia has drastically reduced the budget for public events this year, from 84 million to 18 million rubles. On the other hand, a similar item of expenditure increased sharply in the Communist Party of the Russian Federation – from 996 thousand to 2.9 million rubles. But SZRP increased spending on propaganda: if in the first quarter of last year they spent 23 million rubles on it, then at the beginning of this year it was already 65 million rubles.

Political strategist Roman Smirnov believes that the growth in party revenues against the backdrop of events related to the special operation and sanctions may reflect a general trend towards the centralization of budgetary processes.

Whereas previously the Liberal Democratic Party was primarily distinguished by this, now the rest of the parties prefer, in one way or another, to channel the funds of the regional branches through Moscow. Traditionally, the bulk of the funds for regional elections were collected locally and were also administered by regional offices, the expert reminds. The same recently completed United Russia primaries, although they are held in electronic format, however, require costs, and quite significant ones. But the increase in the Communist Party’s spending on public events has not yet resulted in something noticeable on the streets, Mr. Smirnov states, and this is hardly possible in the current conditions. Most likely, this will be implemented as campaigning in a “light” format – for example, by combining it with local holidays that are of a quasi-political nature, or charity events.

Anastasia Kornya