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State Duma speaker forecasts heated debates on draft budget

Naryshkin pointed out that the revenues part of the budget would be smaller than was forecast earlier, “hence, there is the need to optimize expenditures

STRASBOURG, September 30 (Itar-Tass) - Sergei Naryshkin, speaker of the State Duma lower house of Russian parliament, now in Strasbourg for the current session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), forecasts heated debates over the draft federal budget for 2014 and for the three-year period.

The government on Monday submitted to the lower house the draft budget for the coming three-year period, as well as the draft budgets of the Pension Fund, the funds of mandatory medical insurance and social insurance, as well as the guidelines of the budget and tax policies.

“Obviously, the debating on and the adoption of the budget is one of the key events of the autumn session of the State Duma, also for parliament and for the government,” Naryshkin pointed out.

The speaker noted that the Budget and Tax Committee and other relevant committees would immediately get down to working on these documents “not with a blank slate”. “All through the summer the deputies worked with the ministries and the government on the basis of the budget message of the president and recommendations of the State Duma factions, including those received from the voters,” he recalled.

Naryshkin has stressed that the deputies’ main demands are unconditional fulfillment of the social obligations of the state, funding of the implementation of instructions contained in the presidential decrees issued in May and effective use of budget funds.”

Naryshkin said the necessary legislative base had been created to ensure deputies’ powers at different stages of work on the draft budget: the preparatory work, consideration and adoption of the document and control over its observance. “The spring session approved the new wording of the bill on the Audit Chamber and the bill on the parliamentary control,” he said, adding that these amendments considerably broaden the State Duma’s powers.

Naryshkin pointed out that the revenues part of the budget would be smaller than was forecast earlier, “hence, there is the need to optimize expenditures.” “So, heated constructive debates are ahead on the platform of the State Duma,” Naryshkin said.

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