Shark foundation

The idea to write a financial plan for three five -year periods forward - until 2023 - at first glance looks strange. The practice of recent years shows that even in the annual federal budget, numerous amendments are then made. This forces us to conclude that in conditions when state revenues are seriously dependent on world oil prices and other raw materials, even medium-term planning seems to be something like a useful but practical meaning of training for the Ministry of Finance officials. Neither the price of oil, nor the national currency, nor inflation do not want to fit into any forecasts and plans.

Meanwhile, the fifteen -year financial plan cannot be called completely meaningless, since it did not appear in itself, but after the Ministry of Economic Development (mayor) prepared an extremely ambitious strategy for the country's development until 2020. In fact, the budget strategy until 2023 is the Ministry of Finance’s response to the long -term plans of the department of Elvira Nabiullina. At a meeting on the preparation of the financial strategy, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin emphasized that it is inextricably linked with the “concept of long -term development of Russia until 2020”, examined by the government last week. The document that is prepared in the Ministry of Finance should become "its component, financial skeleton, base, foundation." This foundation, in the presentation of the Minister of Finance, may be quite shaky. “We enter in a large period of reducing the income of the federal budget” - this is perhaps the main conclusion voiced by Alexei Kudrin, to whom they came to the Ministry of Finance in the process of working on a “fifteen -year -old”. At the same time, the head of the Ministry of Finance added: “Even if we have the price of oil for $ 120-150 per barrel, this trend will practically not change.” The threat of oil and gas revenues of the state is not so much a possible continuation of the collapse of energy prices, which began in July this year, as a depletion of the main deposits and the associated recession of prey.

Another disappointing conclusion to which the Ministry of Finance attempts to look into the long -term future is an almost inevitable crisis of the pension system associated with the demographic situation in the country (see p. 38). At the same time, the idea adopted earlier to solve the problem of constantly growing pension payments (when reducing the able -bodied population) at the expense of the money of the National Welfare Fund (FNB) may not be quite wealthy. The FNB, which is formed due to the oil outbuildings of the state, may cease to replenish in the coming years, and income from investing its funds may be insufficient to patch holes in the pension system. The most interesting thing is that the same forecasts lead the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Economic Development to exactly the opposite conclusions. The long -term decrease in the budget’s oil revenues is simultaneously an argument of Kudrin against a reduction in VAT, as a result of which the stability of the budget may be under threat, and the argument of Nabiullina in favor of a reduction in this tax, which should give an impetus to the accelerated development of innovative sectors of the economy. The stooping stream of petrodollars forces the mayor to force state investments, and the Ministry of Finance, on the contrary, is increasingly relate to accumulated reserves.

Thus, the struggle of two long -term strategies - financial and general economic - has become a continuation of the struggle of all the intensifying "airships" with the last "monetarists" in the government.