MOSCOW, June 24. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin demanded to increase the efficiency of budget spending. He set the task at the government meeting Wednesday.
"This work is always difficult, and very boring, bearing in mind that we have many priorities and they are all very important. Of course we must proceed from the current economic realities that the country exists in," Putin said. He noted that the credit indebtedness amounts to 2.2 trillion rubles ($40.49 bln). At the same time the resources that are actively used in some areas stand at hundreds of billions. "You [Finance Minister Anton Siluanov — TASS] were talking about the need to use what we have more effectively — this is an extremely important area of our work. I ask everyone to pay the utmost attention to the issue," Putin said.
Finance Minister Siluanov proposed at the meeting to "make decisions that would not allow us to scatter expenses, and to finance out main program goals and events."
At the same time, according to the Minister, even in that case quite considerable budget deficit volume remains — 2.4% of the Russia’s GDP in 2016. Although, taking into account the task to reduce the deficit and improve balance, the Finance Ministry is working on gradually reducing the deficit, so that by 2018 the figure is reduced to the minimum — 0.7% of the country’s GDP.
"This will lead to the situation when we keep reserves that we were saving during the good years and those reserves will be uniformly used within 3 years," Siluanov said. He noted that the goal is in fitting the special programs withing the budget and keeping reserves without increasing the budget.
According to Siluanov, the budget that is currently being formed is not simple — its task is to stimulate the economic growth by reducing inflation and the cost of credit resources in the market. At the same time, according to him, it is necessary to increase the quality of the federal budget spending. "Revenues are falling against the parameters that we have set in the framework of the "three-year plan" from 2015 to 2017," Siluanov said. "According to our estimations, in the next year our revenues will decrease by roughly 1.8 trillion rubles ($33.13 bln), and by 1.6 trillion rubles ($29.44 bln) in 2017," he added. That’s why, Siluanov noted, the expenditure budget is given that much attention.