The end of the stab fund

By 2010, the budget expenditures will catch up with the revenues of the Ministry of Finance prepared the first budget design for the upcoming three -year -old. Yesterday, at an expanded meeting of the College of the Ministry of Finance, they were published by Minister Alexei Kudrin.

The three -year budget of Kudrin will be innovative. In it, the cutting price of the stabund is replaced by an oil and gas transfer. The fund itself is divided into two parts - a reserve fund in the amount of 10% of GDP and the Future generation fund, formed by the residual principle, but with the possibility of investing in highly profitable tools of the stock market. In addition, a reserve is laid in the budget - the so -called conditionally distributed expenses from which it will be possible to add financing priority areas. And the main innovation is that the surplus will be sharply reduced - 36.5 billion rubles to 2010 are ridiculous: the growth rate of the reserve fund will be reduced, and the volume of borrowing in the domestic market will increase to 700 billion rubles.

Neneftegas Cross

The reserve fund will be formed in Russia on February 1, 2008. It will be sent to it from export duties and NPPs for oil and gas. Initially, Kudrin also wanted to enroll there the income tax on oil workers and dividends paid by oil state -owned companies and Gazprom, but the Mayrs and the government of the government achieved that this would not be. Kudrin was not upset and promised that "this is a matter of time."

Kudrin but another managed to show everyone the dependence of the Russian economy on world energy prices. It turned out that almost half of all the expenditures of the 2007 budget lasts on oil and gas income. Therefore, the oil and gas transfer in 2007 (if you recount the accepted budget according to the new methodology) is 4.7% of GDP.

But here, the ideology of the cleansing of the economy from oil and gasolines, which Kudrin promoted in his scientific articles (the newspaper wrote about them repeatedly), was distorted. Kudrin -scientist demanded that the size of the oil and gas transfer is 3.5% of GDP - no more. In practice (see table), expenses are inflated at the expense of oil and gas. The 2008 year costs. Although the budget, on behalf of the President, should enter the Duma ahead of schedule - by April 30, the election factor could not be avoided. The cost of expenses will be 20%in 2008, and the oil and gas transfer - 6.1%. This is much more than what Kudrin himself considers reasonable. After the presidential election, the transfer size will remain high - 5.3 and 4.5% of GDP, respectively in 2009 and 2010. At the same time, the volume of borrowing in the domestic market will increase - in 2009 bonds will be issued by almost 500 billion rubles, and in 2010 - by 673 billion rubles. This will be the highest level of borrowing in the domestic market since the collapse of the GKO pyramid in 1998.

Wrong triangle

An alarming call for the government should be the budget parameters published by the Ministry of Finance. The fact is that the increase in expenses is significantly ahead of the growth of income. There are less and less conjunctural income, therefore, they need to be compensated from non -resource sources. In other words, the government does not have the right to make a mistake in diversification of the economy.

It is noteworthy that in the structure of oil and gas revenues, more and more will be sent to the budget and less and less - departed in the reserve fund.

If in 2007 the equivalent of 4.9% of GDP was allowed to expenses (the total oil and gas revenue - 8.2%), then in 2010 the budget will receive additional expenses from the global situation in the amount of 4.5% of GDP, while 5.3% of GDP will be earned in oil and gas. The oil and gas pillow is becoming thinner and thinner.

And according to some estimates, the size of the oil and gas transfer laid down by the Ministry of Finance in the preparation of the budget is a much larger plot of petrodollars than the cutting price operating before the end of 2007. In fact, this is the beginning of the eating of the stab fund.

The federal budget surplus is also reduced. In 2010, it will amount to only 36.5 billion rubles. True, the future budget does not take into account the money lying in the reserve fund, while the budget surplus of the 2007 includes money, which should be sent to the stab fund.

Tax officials cut the budget

The Federal Tax Service (Federal Tax Service) refuses to fulfill the tax collection plans to the 2007 budget. On March 2, at a government meeting, it unexpectedly found out that instead of 1.4 trillion rubles of value added tax (VAT), tax authorities expect to collect about 1 trillion rubles in the budget. As said at a meeting of the College of the Ministry of Finance of the Federal Tax Service, Vladimir Gusev, this pessimistic assessment of VAT revenues has already been agreed with the government yesterday. And he made a new proposal: to revise the collection of income tax in 2007. According to Gusev, the growth of income tax, which was observed in previous years, was associated, in particular, with high oil prices, gas and other resources. The deputy head of the Federal Tax Service explained that the government’s decision to reconsider the forecast oil prices for 2007 towards the decrease (from $ 61 to $ 55 per barrel) will also entail a slowdown, and it is likely to reduce the growth rate of income tax.

Does the budget surplus interfere with you?

Alexander Shokhin / President of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs

I’m not in Moscow now, so he certainly does not bother me. And in general, the budget surplus does not interfere with me in the same way as it will not interfere and its small deficit, which, during periods of low oil prices, is funded by transfers from the stabilization fund. The main thing is a well -predictable budget policy in the field of non -prototype expenses, holding inflation, and so on. Then they will not interfere with the deficit.

Sergey Glazyev / Member of the State Duma Committee on Budget and Taxes

Yes, he interferes with everyone, because the pumping of the money of our taxpayers to lend a war in Iraq causes only protest and bewilderment. I believe that they must be directed to salaries to our teachers and doctors, who just create the very future generation for which we save money.

The budget surplus at high oil prices helps me to live calmly. As for the possible information of the surplus to zero, I think that a fracture occurs in our budget policy, an impulse that formed after the crisis was exhausted. Then we punished ourselves and began to pursue a very cautious policy, but the crisis is already far away, prices have not fallen for a long time, and now we have been departing from this policy. And the mechanism of the reserve fund and the Foundation of Future generations should allow us this.

Sergey Litovchenko / Executive Director of the Association of Managers of Russia

I do not think that the surplus interferes with someone. A normal situation - the money is not invested until there is no good object for investment. Of course, it’s not very good when you don’t know where to invest. But you don’t know today - you will find out tomorrow. Therefore, there is nothing wrong with the surplus.

03/21/2007 / Andrey Lavrov, the survey was prepared by Alexei Smirnov, the material was published in the "newspaper" No. 51 of 03.22.2007.