| Government commission optimizes government spending The government intends to conduct an inventory of all budget expenditures in order to eliminate ineffective ones. The task of checking the validity of spending was assigned to a government commission formed in December last year, the first meeting of which was held yesterday in the White House by Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin. “We must cure the budget system of two diseases at the same time - malnutrition and obesity,” he said, opening the meeting. This means that funds will be transferred to where they are most needed. “This will increase the return on each ruble, reduce the tax burden in Russia, increase the return on the real sector in the form of investments, create new jobs and increase budget revenues at all levels,” Mr. Kudrin noted. However, the task has also been set to reduce budget expenses. True, not in absolute volume, but in relation to GDP, which, as we know, is growing every year.
It is expected that the work of the commission will be concentrated on reconciling registers of budgetary institutions, inventory of non-core property, investment expenses, federal target programs, and the number of budgetary institutions. As part of “global optimization,” the government intends to finally deal with federal state unitary enterprises (FSUEs), from which the state has no benefit. According to Mr. Kudrin, we are talking about the privatization of “thousands of enterprises” this year.
As can be seen from the first decisions of the commission, Mr. Kudrin is not going to delay the implementation of the new order of the prime minister. The first proposals for optimizing budget expenditures should be ready in 10 days - by February 1. Such a short deadline is explained by the fact that already in February the Ministry of Finance begins work on drawing up a draft federal budget for 2004. In addition, as the Deputy Prime Minister said, in its work the commission will take into account the financial plan for three years. Mikhail VOROBYEV |
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