Three years account

Moscow expects a significant increase in city treasury revenues

The capital's budget will remain deficit in the next three years, but the growth of Moscow's own income will allow the mayor's office to significantly increase funding for social programs. In any case, the mayors, who approved yesterday at a meeting of the city government the three-year budget of the Russian capital, expect to cross the 2 trillion ruble level by 2011. That is, as explained by the head of the finance department Yuri Korostelev, the city’s revenues will increase by more than 60%. The deficit, he said, is planned to be corrected through “borrowed funds.” However, the experience of recent years shows that budget planning is not the strongest feature of Moscow managers. And incomes have already exceeded estimates many times over.

This year, according to the head of the Federal Tax Service in Moscow, Nadezhda Sinnikova, the fiscal authorities recorded a significant increase in collections. “The flow of taxes into the budget can be described as rapid,” she said, explaining that in the seven months of 2008, taxes collected were 54% more than in the same period last year – 727 billion rubles. Apparently, the financial department that drew up the draft budget was also guided by these indicators. According to city financiers, in 2009 the capital's budget revenues will amount to about 1.4 trillion rubles, in 2010 - about 1.7 trillion, and in 2011 - 1.95 trillion rubles. Expenses are planned accordingly at the level of 1.5 trillion rubles, over 1.7 trillion rubles. and 2 trillion rubles.

The mayor of the capital, Yuri Luzhkov, called the draft budget a “serious document” and authorized its sending to the Moscow City Duma after Mr. Korostelev assured him that the lion’s share of the proceeds would go to fulfilling the city’s social obligations. “About 1.8 trillion rubles will be allocated to the social sphere over three years,” the official explained. According to him, even today the social orientation of the policy is maintained due to the fact that up to 60% of expenses go to social services. These are both direct social expenses (up to 40%) and indirect ones, to which Mr. Korostelev included, in particular, major repairs of housing stock and roads and the payment of various subsidies.

More than 800 billion rubles. will be used over three years to increase wages for public sector employees in Moscow. Today, the minimum salary of public sector employees in the city is about 5 thousand rubles, but by the end of next year, due to three planned indexations, it should approach 8.9 thousand rubles. In total, spending on wages will increase from 220 billion in 2009 to 320 billion in 2011. Moscow will allocate more than 243 billion rubles over three years to pay pensions and city supplements to non-working pensioners.

A significant increase in spending is planned in transport and housing construction. According to the head of the capital's department of economic policy and city development, Marina Ogloblina, the volume of capital allocations for housing construction in 2009-2011 will double compared to the previous three years. Over the next three years, expenses for these purposes will amount to more than 550 billion rubles, which, as the authorities hope, will increase the housing stock by 8.1 million square meters. m. In total, it is planned to allocate more than 1.8 trillion rubles for the implementation of the city’s investment programs, including the construction of schools, kindergartens, universities, reconstruction and construction of social and cultural facilities.

Funding for the construction of roads and metro in Moscow will be increased by 1.5 times - road allocations alone will exceed 300 billion rubles over three years. The lion's share - about 100 billion rubles. -- will “eat up” the construction of the first section of the Fourth Transport Ring, from Entuziastov Highway to Izmailovskoye Highway. The funds will also be used to complete the reconstruction of the Leningradskoye Highway, the construction of new interchanges (including on the Moscow Ring Road), the completion of the construction of Krasnopresnensky Avenue and the improvement of the area near the city-owned Vnukovo Airport. According to Ms. Ogloblina, it is planned to build roads to the microdistricts being built by Moscow builders in the immediate Moscow region - in particular, to the villages of Shcherbinka and Severny. In addition, the mayor's office expects that the federal authorities will partially assume the responsibility for financing the development of Moscow's transport system. As First Deputy Mayor and Head of the Economic Complex Yuri Roslyak explained, the city authorities have already submitted a corresponding request to the Ministry of Transport and the White House.

Moscow, on the contrary, intends to cope with the overhaul of residential buildings on its own for now. In any case, the three-year budget includes about 240 billion rubles for these purposes, which significantly exceeds the amount of possible assistance that the Housing and Communal Services Reform Assistance Fund is able to provide to the capital, as well as other regions. It is possible, however, that city officials, who currently consider the conditions for allocating money from the fund to be unfulfillable, will eventually change their position and take advantage of federal proposals. It is noteworthy, however, that the process of transferring residential buildings to apartment owners, which should go in parallel with major repairs, was not reflected in the budget. In any case, officials have so far planned an annual increase in the cost of operating the city's housing stock. In 2009, 50 billion rubles are allocated for these purposes, in 2010 - 60 billion, and in 2011 - 71 billion rubles.

Fedor SEREBRYANSKY