On Friday, the board of the Accounts Chamber also reviewed the results of an audit of the activities of the Ministry of Economic Development in the implementation of federal target programs (FTP) “Reducing differences in the socio-economic development of regions of the Russian Federation (for 2002-2010 and until 2015)” and “South of Russia” (until 2006 of the year). The government customer of the programs was the Ministry of Economic Development. Both of them started in 2001. The total cost of the first is 66.3 billion rubles, the second - 104 billion rubles. The main goal of the Federal Target Program “Reducing differences in the socio-economic development of regions of the Russian Federation” is to reduce the gap in basic socio-economic indicators between developed and lagging regions by half by 2015. The goals of the Federal Target Program "South of Russia" are the development of the raw material base for oil and gas production and the expansion of main pipelines, as well as the creation of conditions for the development of small and medium-sized businesses.
As reported by the Department of Information and Public Relations of the Accounts Chamber, an audit of these federal target programs carried out in March-May 2004 “revealed serious shortcomings in their implementation.” The auditors' report notes that both target programs were underfunded from the federal budget in 2003 (by 3% and 4%, respectively). At the same time, as the auditors concluded, the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade has not yet created the necessary conditions for “investment activity of program participants.” Thus, the actual financing of the federal target program “Reducing differences in the socio-economic development of regions of the Russian Federation” from extra-budgetary sources in 2003 amounted to only 194.6 million rubles. instead of the envisaged 3.98 billion rubles. Misuse of funds under the federal target program “Reducing differences in the socio-economic development of regions of the Russian Federation” amounted to 246.7 million rubles. Without making appropriate changes to government contracts, 104.3 million rubles. was used in the Voronezh, Irkutsk, Nizhny Novgorod and Tver regions “for purposes that do not comply with the conditions for their receipt, defined by government contracts on the procedure for interaction in the implementation of the program.” Moreover, the volume of unfinished construction “for start-up facilities” of the above-mentioned Federal Target Program as of January 1, 2004 amounted to 828.8 thousand rubles. This money, as noted in the Accounts Chamber, “was unlawfully allocated by the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade to new facilities of the program, while the commissioning facilities of the current year were left without funding, which will lead to a delay in putting them into operation.”
ALEXEY J-SHAPOVALOV

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 174/P dated September 20, 2004, page 14

Authors:

Alexey Shapovalov

The Accounts Chamber has discovered inappropriate funding for targeted programs of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade