The federal budget deficit in January – July amounted to 2.817 trillion rubles, or about 1.8% of GDP, this follows from the preliminary estimate of the Ministry of Finance of Russia. In July, the budget deficit increased by 222 billion rubles.
The Ministry of Finance last published estimate of federal budget deficit (surplus) relative to Russian GDP in June 2021.
The Ministry of Finance reports that the volume of budget revenues for seven months of 2023 amounted to 14.5 trillion rubles, which is 7.9% lower than in the same period of the last year. Budget revenues excluding the oil and gas sector increased in annual expression by 19.8% – up to 10.3 trillion rubles, according to the assessment of the ministry.
Oil and gas revenues in January-July decreased by 41.4% year-on-year, dropping up to 4.19 trillion rubles, according to the Ministry of Finance. The ministry said this was due to lower Urals oil price, lower gas price and reduction of its exports, as well as a high comparison base of the last year.
According to the preliminary assessment of the Ministry of Finance, the amount of budget expenditures for the reporting period amounted to 17.3 trillion rubles, which is 14% more than last year.
In the first seven months of this year, the figure amounted to 2.817 trillion rubles, or about 1.8% of GDP. According to forecasts of the Ministry of Finance, at the end of 2023, the deficit will amount to 2% of GDP – 2 trillion 925.3 billion rubles.
“The conditionally safe level of budget deficit is 3% of GDP. So for now nothing threatens the sustainability of public finances. It is too early”, Sergey Khestanov, economist, associate professor of RANEPA, says.
The Ministry of Finance also said that to finance expenses and repay debt obligations it plans to borrow 3.5 trillion rubles on the market. Sergey Khestanov believes that this plan so far looks quite realistic.