The Russian government’s presidium on Thursday intends to consider a revised budget for 2009 that has turned out to be more optimistic than the Finance Ministry has earlier forecasted. Vice Prime Minister, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin believes that the law on the budget may be considered by the State Duma lower house of parliament as early as next week.
The finance ministry proposes to increase the expenditure for 2009 at 9.854 trillion roubles, which is by 153 billion roubles more than in the approved budget for this year. According to Kudrin, the additional funds formed as a result of saving of budget outlays. This will make it possible to already in 2009 finance a number of programmes that had been planned to be launched only next year.
Besides, in connection with the adjusted socio-economic development forecast the finance minister forecasts an addition 69 billion roubles in budget revenue in 2009. However, he said that these funds will not be used for expenditure, but will cover the budget deficit that is expected to reach 3.131 trillion roubles. Kudrin told journalists on Tuesday at a briefing on the results of a meeting with the RF prime minister on budget projections, “We expect 69 billion roubles more additional revenue that planned considering that we take new macroeconomics.” The also stressed that these funds will not be used this year. Besides, by means of the redistribution of expenditure the government will manage to save more than 140 billion roubles. “In addition, we have carried out the work to specify the budget fulfilment and made a decision that 141 billion roubles will be redistributed from one budget items to another, which will allow us to maximally fulfil the budget and a number of tasks that we wanted to fulfil next year,” Kudrin added. According to the finance minister, the government also envisages 150 billion roubles for the capitalisation of banks.
