Translated material
The poor will become poorer
Content
- Mumin Shakirov sums up the results of the 25th week with political scientist Vasily Zharkov and economist Dmitry Nekrasov.
Doctors and teachers will have to tighten their belts
The Russian provinces are plunging into a severe fuel crisis, and a record 56 regions of the country are facing budget deficits and salary cuts for teachers and doctors. Against this background, reports Bloomberg, the Kremlin plans to add another 4–5 trillion rubles to the war.
Doctors and teachers will have to tighten their belts
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A United Russia deputy and deputy general director of the Belorechenskoye enterprise from Irkutsk asked the regional authorities to sort out the situation in the fuel sector. Farmers were unable to secure support from diesel suppliers directly. Either there is no fuel, or it is sent to the western regions of the country. Irkutsk residents are ready to turn to Xi Jinping if the issue cannot be resolved; the future harvesting campaign in the region will become unprofitable due to high wholesale fuel prices.
Economist Dmitry Nekrasov says that the front-line regions have already faced a food crisis, but the rest are not yet facing problems with food due to a lack of gasoline:
– Where can the government get additional money for the war?
– As usual, borrow from banks. Last year, the Government did not take a penny from the National Welfare Fund; it borrowed and borrowed all the money that was the entire deficit. Last year, net borrowings, minus repayments, in my opinion, amounted to 5.6 trillion rubles.
– There is a budget deficit in 56 regions of Russia, can Moscow somehow solve this problem?
– The province will have to cut costs, there seems to be no question about it. Some regional budgets are in much worse shape than the federal budget. And, most importantly, they simply do not have the opportunity to borrow. Well, at least the same as the feds, because no one in their right mind will give them money now. This is not the first year that there has been a painful reduction in various expenses at the regional level. It will continue. But on the other hand, it is clear that Moscow will also resolve these issues. We do not have a bankruptcy procedure for regions, like in the States. And what happens when the regional budget gets into a problematic situation is rather similar to what happened to Greece in the European Union during the debt crisis. They did not allow her to default, they gave her money, but this money was tied to the conditions of severe cuts in many different expenses, which was extremely unpleasant, which also caused many different problems in Greece. The reorganization of regions in Russia is happening in much the same way.
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– Why have regional budgets become scarce, what is the reason?
- Firstly, they were charged with part of the expenses, which, in general, are federal responsibility, for example, payments to the military when signing a contract. Plus, there are a lot of other social programs for the military. All the tax increases that have happened recently were increases in favor of the federal budget, and not in favor of the regional ones. These are the two main factors, but there may be separate factors in each specific region. Last year, in the oil regions there was a factor in the fall in oil prices, for example, in the coal regions there were problems with coal exports. And these two factors that I named are global.
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