September 28, 2015, 23:40 / Economics

The Central Bank will add money to the budget

The budget will receive 90% of the regulator’s profit for 2015, which is about 300 billion rubles Olga Kuvshinova Margarita Papchenkova The Central Bank hopes that the new norm will remain temporary / E. Razumny / Vedomosti

The main source of profit for the Central Bank is interest income from lending to banks; in 2014 it amounted to 437.5 billion rubles. This year, the Central Bank increased refinancing, giving banks 3 trillion rubles in January–July. more than for the same period in 2014, calculated Natalia Orlova from Alfa Bank , including about 1.5 trillion rubles. – currency repo. Taking into account the fact that the Central Bank rates have become higher, the profit for 2015 could amount to about 300 billion rubles, Orlova calculated. Thus, in January 2015, the debt on average was three times higher than in January 2014, and the rate was also much higher - 17% versus 5.5% in January 2014. However, the volume of banks' debt to the Central Bank has increased since its peak in December 2014. is steadily decreasing, a year earlier, on the contrary, it was growing and by the end of 2015 the average annual values may become equal, notes Oleg Solntsev from TsMAKP. In 2014, the average level of debt in rubles amounted to 5 trillion rubles. (with currency repo - a little more), for January - August 2015 - 5.8 trillion (6.1 trillion - with currency repo), for the whole of 2015 it could also be about 5 trillion, Solntsev calculated.

The Central Bank will transfer 90% of profits to the budget at the end of 2015, two federal officials told Vedomosti. This is 15 percentage points more than under the current law. According to one of the officials, increasing the profit deduction rate by 15 percentage points will bring the budget an additional 50 billion rubles. The same figure was given by another person familiar with the calculations. Based on this, the expected profit of the Central Bank is about 330 billion rubles, of which the budget will receive about 300 billion rubles: twice as much as at the end of 2014.

Previously, according to the law on the Central Bank, the regulator transferred half of the profit to the budget; in 2010, this norm was temporarily suspended until 2016, and the amount of contributions was increased to 75% of profit. Last year, in order to mobilize budget revenues, the temporary norm became permanent. However, another separate bill also raised it temporarily – for one year: at the end of 2014, the Central Bank transferred another 15% of profits to Vnesheconombank (VEB) as a property contribution to strengthen the stability of the banking system. Thus, at the end of 2014, the Central Bank transferred 90% of its profits in the amount of 183.5 billion rubles: 137.5 billion to the budget and 27.5 billion to VEB.

The Central Bank hopes that the new norm will remain temporary. “The Bank of Russia does not object to transferring 90% of 2015 profits to the budget as a one-time measure, given the difficult economic situation,” the regulator’s press service told Vedomosti.