Program fight

The budget reform stalled before it started. Government economists cannot agree on a list of programs that will make up a new type of budget

When the reform of the Russian budget was still being discussed, its developers from the Ministry of Finance suggested calling megaprojects (such as supporting industry or housing construction) long-term targeted programs. The abbreviation cerebral palsy appeared in departmental correspondence for several months, but then, as a government official told Newsweek, they decided to get rid of it so as not to remember every time about cerebral palsy. Instead of cerebral palsy, mega-projects began to be called GTPs—government target programs.

We managed to decide on the name, but not on the state programs themselves. In early August, the government approved the procedure for the formation, coordination and approval of the SDP. But their complete list is still not ready. As always in the government, the movement was blocked by the conflict between the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Economic Development. Moreover, it is easier for the Ministry of Economic Development to look for allies in the government, its approach is closer to the sectoral principle of management familiar to officials.

GET OUT OF THE FTP

At the heart of the budget reform, which the Ministry of Finance has been preparing since the winter, was a simple idea: the state spends a lot of money on everything, but there is no order in spending. There are several dozen federal targeted programs in Russia, from the World Ocean to the Russian Language, hundreds of billions of rubles are allocated for them, but it is impossible to understand what effect they bring.

It is practically impossible to close federal programs one at a time: ministries and departments receive most of their budgets from them. The Ministry of Finance also fails to put things in order in the FTP list. Every year, having achieved the necessary instructions from the President and the Prime Minister, officials offer to start new programs, and government financiers often do not have enough arguments to refuse them. Therefore, the Ministry of Finance decided to act simply: to abandon all federal target programs at once, and to finance the economy, social programs, industry and science, housing construction and roads with the help of very enlarged programs - those same GPCs.

There were several advantages to this idea. Firstly, the Ministry of Finance proposed to approve the list of programs for many years ahead, so that new ones would not appear and it would be easier to predict budget expenditures. Secondly, he proposed to change the method of financing. Now, according to the FTP, departments receive money directly from the budget, there is a coordinating department, but it does not determine how exactly the money is spent. Now each state program will have a real curator: one ministry writes the program, distributes money to other departments and is fully responsible for its implementation to the government.

In addition, the current budget design did not correspond to the main program document of the White House - "Strategy-2020". The FTPs did not correspond to the government's new three-year plan and were not linked to its priorities, such as "New Quality of Life" or "Innovative Development and Modernization of the Economy." The Ministry of Finance proposed to solve the problem once and for all: approve a list of long-term programs for several years ahead and give money only for them.

A WISE DECISION

At the beginning of the summer, the main parameters of the budget reform called the Program for Improving the Efficiency of Budget Expenditures were approved by the government. From 2012, the budget should be fully transferred to the GPC system. In order to maintain a staff balance between departments, almost all powers were distributed symmetrically between the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Economic Development. For the main task—the approval of the GCP list—Prime Minister Vladimir Putin came up with a “two keys” scheme. The Ministry of Economic Development was to develop this list, and the Ministry of Finance was to coordinate it. "A wise decision," an employee of the government apparatus ironically, in the sense that even on simpler issues, departments cannot find a compromise for years.

Disagreements, of course, began immediately. In June, the Ministry of Finance sent its version of the GPC list to the Ministry of Economic Development, and in July to the government. There were 37 programs on the list of Alexei Kudrin's department, they were not divided into groups, and the Ministry of Finance proposed to solve all issues of industry and the safety of citizens with the help of two large state programs.

The Ministry of Economic Development had a fundamentally different approach. The department proposed to leave the sectoral industrial programs and not to combine financial flows for security, so as not to quarrel with the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the State Drug Control Service and the FSB, but to give each of them according to their own program. At the same time, all GPCs are divided into five groups according to the priorities of the government's work. "Singling out individual state programs," Andrei Klepach, deputy head of the Ministry of Economic Development, wrote to the government in early August, "will increase the efficiency of their administration."

In the list, the Ministry of Economic Development also took into account a political moment missed by the Ministry of Finance: the Clean Water project lobbied by United Russia, with which the scandalous inventor Viktor Petrik is associated, received the status of an independent state program. An employee of the Ministry of Finance scolds colleagues for such a proposal: “If such programs as Clean Water are allowed, they will spread to an incredible amount.” The program has already proved its political weight, the official admits, but Kudrin's department hopes it won't be on the final list.

SIDE VIEW

"Clean Water" by Boris Gryzlov is not the only reason for controversy. The table of disagreements between departments, sent last week to the government, consists of four points, and the main one, as the disputers admit, is the number of industrial GPCs. “If we start to split up the industry,” an employee of the Ministry of Finance defends the position of his department, “the defense industry and healthcare will immediately rise up.” There should be one big block, the official says, and several directions can be developed inside.

The Ministry of Economic Development is perplexed: how can support for aviation, shipbuilding and the automotive industry be combined into one program. “A block to support the main industries is like combining football, women and cars in one program, although, of course, they have something in common,” an employee of the department is indignant. “The whole idea turns into a departmental classification—only a side view,” he states. That is, in the near future it will not be possible to form a budget only from state programs.

Coordination of the final list of GPCs is also complicated by the fact that they must be divided among departments and not offend anyone. Initially, says an employee of the Ministry of Finance, the goal was for each ministry to have at least one program, albeit a small one, otherwise, what kind of ministry would it be. But as a result of the reform, several super-departments may appear in the government. The Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Health and Social Development will control ten GPCs, five for each. The Ministry of Regional Development will receive only three programs—Housing and Housing, Sochi Olympics, and Regional Policy—but their total cost will be close to a trillion rubles, a tenth of Russia's budget.

"All disagreements must be removed before the fall, otherwise we won't have time to launch the new system by 2012," fears an employee of the Ministry of Finance. The government agrees with this. "It is clear that the 2011 budget will not be drawn up according to the new scheme, but by 2012 the GPC should be under steam so that there are no disruptions in funding," says a senior Newsweek source in the White House. Officials pin their hopes on Aleksey Kudrin's return from vacation this week: as Deputy Prime Minister, he holds coordination meetings to develop a list of GPCs and, as the government hopes, will be able to put an end to the dispute between departments, without Putin's interference.

FIELD FOR CONFLICTS

Even if officials manage to decide by September 1 how many and which GTPs will form the basis of the 2012 budget, the real problems with the new state programs will only begin. The idea to invest in one program all spending on transport, medicine or housing construction, which is generally agreed with both the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Economy, is already facing resistance from other departments that are fighting for their pieces of the existing federal target programs in future state programs.

“There was an idea to give all educational institutions to the Ministry of Education,” says the official of the Ministry of Economics. “The doctors started shouting: what about medical universities? we won't give up!" According to him, the idea of ​​transferring all medical institutions to the Ministry of Health met with the same resistance - Defense Ministry officials said they would not give up their polyclinics and hospitals, because if the Ministry of Health did not have enough money, they would save on them in the first place. That is why officials believe that in 2011 the new cut of the budget - the division into state programs - will remain, according to an official of the Ministry of Economic Development, "just an analytical application," and not a working tool.

Experts agree that state programs will not lead to an increase in the efficiency of government spending, but to an intensification of the struggle of departments for their money. "Departmental struggle will soon begin," says Vladimir Klimanov, director of the Public Finance Reform Institute, "because some of them will begin to lose control over chunks of the budget." As a result, everyone will quarrel, Klimanov sums up, and it is not logic that will win, but the political weight of the ministries.