For the valleys and after the hills ...

The budget of the territorial road fund as a mirror of the Pskov bureaucracy

The eternal problem of Russia is roads. Despite the significant tax burden on their maintenance and reconstruction, the quality still leaves much to be desired. As a result, a logical question arises: where is the money? To find the answer to it, let's look at the budget of the regional road fund over the past four years.

Income

The impressive growth of subsidies from the Federal Road Fund is striking. Whatever you say, and hope on manna heavenly dies the last. True, its main part is the purpose of the construction of new roads. So you will have to repair the actors on their own.

However, as can be seen from the schedule, the own tax base of the regional road fund practically does not develop. The actual receipt of tax on road users, which accounts for up to 85% of all tax revenues to the road fund, in 2001 decreased by almost a third. In the context of the growth of trade in the economy, such a reduction can only be qualified as an increase in arrears due to the invasive of tax payment for enterprises, the significant share of which is still loss-making. No wonder the Russian government is going to generally cancel this current tax from next year, as ineffective for both the economy and the budget.

Expenses

It is well known that with an increase in the income of the organization, the share of expenses for targeted activities should only grow, and the share of management and development costs - to contract. There is no such phenomenon in the territorial road fund. Directly for the repair and maintenance of roads, 70% of the road fund funds are sent. At the same time, the share of non -production costs (management apparatus, construction of production bases, automation, land tax payment) increases by 1% annually and last year reached 14%.

For the first time, unlike previous years, when the construction of new roads was steadily reduced, it is planned to send seven times more funds (more than 200 million rubles) for these purposes in 2002. True, they never found their money for this, but asked them from the federal center. What will come of it - we will see at the end of the year.

Questions

Despite the apparent growth in financing of road construction and repair, there are ineffective management of monetary funds. Apart from the federal funds entered to the budget for the construction of new roads, cardinal improvements in financing road construction and repairs in the budget for 2002 were not laid down.

With inflation of 15-20% per year, the road workers themselves lay only 5% of additional funds to the budget. At the same time, 50 percent growth is provided for management costs. The content of the apparatus, material incentives of TDK employees, the acquisition of office equipment - none of these articles are forgotten. The costs of managing road facilities as a whole, although they do not exceed 5-6% in the total expenses of the fund, however, the constant increase in expenses for the maintenance of the central apparatus (the administration of the territorial road committee) for 5 million rubles annually is indicative. Where are the additional funds going? For comparison: last year for the construction of roads in the city of Pskov, the TDK allocated only 2 million rubles.

There is a fear that with this development of the situation, disciplined taxpayers will be forced to contain not only the staff of their enterprises, but also employees of the territorial road fund. Well, only directions will remain from the roads ...

Valentin Chesnokov, economist.