Give on time

Russia is reducing its debt

The Ministry of Finance published a report on the results of last year. What economists have been saying for the past few months has been officially confirmed: the national debt no longer hangs over the country like a sword of Damocles. From the report of the Ministry of Finance it follows that public debt decreased by 9% of GDP and now amounts to about 40% of GDP. This is significantly less than similar indicators in many developed countries. In a number of EU countries, for example, the size of public debt is about 60%. At the same time, the cost of servicing the national debt, as stated in the report, decreased last year to 2.3% of GDP compared to 2.6% of GDP in 2001.

According to the Ministry of Finance, the repayment of government external debt was carried out strictly according to schedule. The country paid $14 billion to creditors - $6.8 billion to repay the principal debt, and $7.2 billion in interest payments. This year, as we know, Russia will have to repay $17.3 billion. The financial reserve created specifically for payments on the main part of the debt ($10.8 billion) amounted to 197 billion rubles by the end of last year, exactly the amount as planned in the 2003 federal budget. And this does not take into account funds from the sale of state-owned shares in the oil companies LUKOIL and Slavneft. Let us recall that for 75% of the shares of Slavneft we managed to get $1.86 billion, and for 5.9% of the shares of LUKOIL - a little less than $800 million. Simple mathematical calculations show that approximately 280 billion were collected to pay off the main part of the debt rubles, or more than 9 billion dollars. The payment of interest (6.5 billion dollars) is already included in the budget. Moreover, according to Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Budget Committee Mikhail Zadornov, these expenses will ultimately be even less than those included in the 2003 budget.

However, as you know, not only we owe, but also to us. Russia demands repayment of some debts, but it is useless to ask for others. Based on this, last year we forgave bad debts amounting to about $860 million. This was done, as they say in the Ministry of Finance, as part of “Russia’s active participation in international initiatives to ease the debt burden of the least developed countries.”

As for the domestic government debt market, as the ministry notes, for the first time in the history of this market, bonds with a maturity of six years were placed. At the same time, the yield on medium-term securities decreased to 13-13.5%, and on long-term securities - to 14%. All this allowed the Ministry of Finance to save 18.4 billion rubles. and use them to finance urgent budget expenditures.

Vera SITNINA