the government approved the reduction of budget expenditures by 450 billion rubles – Kommersant

The government commission on budget projections approved the proposal of the Ministry of Finance to reduce budget expenditures for 2024 by 10% on the so-called unprotected items. Vedomosti with reference to sources. According to one of them, the amount of cuts will be about 450 billion rubles.

Under “protected” expenditures, as a rule, they understand the social obligations of the budget (pensions, benefits, salaries) and partly military expenditures, under “unprotected” – all the rest. As a source close to the government clarified to Vedomosti, in this case, unprotected meant mainly expenses for which there were no financial justifications with appropriate calculations.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Finance told the newspaper that the final amount of optimization has not yet been determined. He assured that the optimization will not affect budget spending on the social sphere, the payment of salaries to state employees, interbudgetary transfers. According to the law on the budget for 2023–2025, spending in the next year will amount to 29.4 trillion rubles. But, according to one of Vedomosti’s sources, the amount of spending, “apparently, will be much higher.”

Finance Minister Anton Siluanov this week informedthat a 10% budget cut refers to non-social expenditures and will not affect social benefits. The minister said that the frontal budget cuts imply “a uniform reduction in spending across all ministries and departments.” He also promised that the state’s defense spending would not be affected.

Laura Keffer