Senators unanimously approved the law on the federal budget for 2024 and the planning period 2025–2026

The Federation Council (FC) on Wednesday considered the law on the federal budget for 2024 and the planning period 2025-2026. The senators had a number of questions about Finance Minister Anton Siluanov’s report – about the financing of closed administrative territories, compensation for taxes sent to the center, the pace of school construction, individual regional development programs, and even about the excess profit tax. But they were quite satisfied with the answers, and the main financial document was approved unanimously.

The main issue of the plenary meeting on November 22 was the consideration budget, which was presented by the head of the specialized committee of the Federation Council Anatoly Artamonov. Calling it a “high-quality and balanced document,” the senator emphasized that when considering the project in the second reading, about 10% of the expenses of the open part of the treasury were redistributed in favor of the social sphere, industry, agriculture, education and science. Let us remind you that the budget for 2024 was adopted by the State Duma with revenues of 35.1 trillion rubles. and expenses of 36.7 trillion. The deficit is thus planned at 1.6 trillion rubles.

According to Mr. Artamonov, the law allocates 96.8% of the total volume of transfers, which gives subjects “clarity when adopting their budgets,” but there are still unresolved problems, for example, an increase in expenses for public sector employees’ salaries due to an increase in the minimum wage. “Currently the regions lack about 200 billion rubles for these purposes,” said the head of the Committee on Budget and Financial Markets, citing among other problems the risk of excessive accumulation of debt.

Anton Siluanov, who spoke next, noted that the main tasks of the three-year budget remained unchanged: “This is defense and security, financing the needs to achieve the goals of the Northern Military District, as well as ensuring all obligations to people.”

According to the minister, funds are planned in the treasury for the development of unmanned aircraft, microelectronics, machine tool manufacturing and “of course, support for the regions.” “It is necessary to ensure a stable resource base so that the powers of the subjects are financially secured, since most of the obligations to people are the responsibility of the regions,” explained the head of the Ministry of Finance, adding that the volume of the subjects’ own income in 2024 will increase by 1.6 trillion rubles.

Senators had a number of questions. Thus, the representative of the Murmansk region Konstantin Dolgov proposed to think about increasing the amount of subsidies for the development of closed administrative towns. Anton Siluanov said that, on the instructions of the president, the amount of the corresponding transfer, which initially amounted to about 9 billion rubles, has already been more than doubled, and in the Arctic alone 10 billion rubles will be allocated annually for these needs. Astrakhan Senator Alexander Bashkin asked whether a compensation mechanism would be introduced for regions that transfer more than 70% of taxes to the federal budget, but have a budgetary capacity below the Russian average. The minister responded by recalling that this mechanism has already been implemented: the “ceiling” for limiting the increase in subsidies for such entities has been doubled.

Representative of Transbaikalia Sergei Mikhailov was concerned about the reduction in funding for school construction. “The goal was to build 1.3 thousand schools in 2024, and this will be done,” Anton Siluanov snapped. “A certain optimization that was carried out is a general strategy to concentrate resources on the main goals. We will consider the issue of priorities in specific schools together with the subjects.” Mari senator Konstantin Kosachev raised the issue of extending and increasing funding for individual support programs for ten “lagging” entities, which end in 2024. The head of the Ministry of Finance in response assured that the results of these programs will soon be summed up and the entities that will be included in the new list of regions whose economies need support will be identified. And the funds for these purposes are based on 10 billion rubles. annually are already taken into account in the forecast for 2025–2026.

Finally, a representative of the Amur region, Ivan Abramov, spoke about complaints from companies that are forced to pay excess profit tax, but consider it unfair.

These are, for example, those who “accumulated assets for 10–15 years” and then sold them “this year”, paid dividends and are now forced to take out a loan. “The money should be at the enterprise,” retorted Mr. Siluanov. “Of the 300 billion rubles that we expected to receive, 40 billion have so far arrived, but I am sure that in November this amount will increase significantly. If there are no resources this year, then next year the tax can be paid double.”

After the speeches and… O. Head of the Accounts Chamber Galina Izotova and Vice-Speaker of the Federation Council Nikolai Zhuravlev, Chairman of the Federation Council Valentina Matvienko took the floor. She said the government had successfully developed and introduced the budget under “unprecedented conditions.” “When you look at what is happening in the USA, where the topic of a shutdown comes up once a week, the budget is adopted for a maximum of a month and it is unknown what will happen in a month, you understand the value of what is being done in the Russian Federation by our president, government and, of course, the Ministry of Finance, at which lies the main responsibility,” noted Ms. Matvienko. According to her, the budget has all the qualities of a financial document of “a powerful sovereign state that is able to develop and withstand any challenges.”

As a result, the senators supported law unanimously. At the same meeting, they approved a number of documents, in particular, on increasing military pensions by 4.5% (from October 1, 2024), on the suspension of indexation of salaries of civil servants (except for the military and security forces) and on increasing the minimum wage in 2024 to 19 ,2 thousand rub.

Andrey Prah