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Duma committee supports draft law on distribution of additional revenue

Budget expenditures in 2012 will increase by 88.7 billion rouble

MOSCOW, May 14 (Itar-Tass) —— The State Duma Budget and Tax Committee has advised the lower house of parliament to adopt, in the first reading, a draft law that specifies key parameters of the federal budget for 2012.

Amendments to the budget are based on the results of budget performance in 2011 and the first quarter of 2012. The document will be submitted to the State Duma on May 16 and may be debated by it in the second reading on May 23.

“Given the macroeconomic situation and the expected budget performance results, we believe that federal budget revenue this year will increase by 897.1 billion roubles,” Deputy Finance Minister Tatyana Nesterenko said at a meeting of the State Duma Budget and Tax Committee on Monday, May 14.

Of that amount, 808.4 billion roubles will come from non-oil and gas revenue and 88.7 billion from oil and gas revenue.

Nesterenko noted that oil and gas revenue in the amount of 88.7 billion roubles might be used for meeting additional budget expenditures. Of 808.4 billion roubles from non-oil and gas revenue, 500 billion roubles may be used for reducing borrowing and the remaining 300.4 billion roubles may go to the Reserve Fund, which may reach 2.6 trillion roubles by the end of this year.

“If oil prices go down from 115 to 110 U.S. dollars per barrel, this means that we may not have to put those 300 billion roubles [5 U.S. dollars per barrel give about 300 billion roubles in revenue] into the Reserve Fund. We will simply not have so much. If things get even worse, we have resources, such as the Reserve Fund, that we created in the previous years in order to fulfill our obligations,” Nesterenko said.

According to the draft law, federal budget revenue in 2012 will increase by 897.1 billion roubles to 12,677 billion roubles, thus reducing the budget deficit from 876.6 billion roubles to 68.1 billion roubles.

Budget expenditures in 2012 will increase by 88.7 billion roubles to 12,745.1 billion roubles.

Budget funds saved in the amount of 46.9 billion roubles, including from investments (due to the absence of the required documents), internal debt servicing and state guarantees, will also be distributed.