Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev said at the meeting with President Vladimir Putin that the government deliberately tied the budget for 2017-2019 on the oil price of $40 per barrel to carry out all social obligations.
"The budget includes the funding of all social expenditures of normative nature. No social commitment was erased or reduced, on the contrary, in some cases, we even agreed to a certain indexing. This also applies to 2017 and the planned period of 2018-2019 years," RIA Novosti cited Medvedev as saying.
The draft budget assumes a deficit of around 3% of GDP and the inflation of 4% in 2017. "Our budget revenues are 13.5 trillion rubles and expenditures - 16 trillion rubles. We have a small deficit of about 3% of GDP," Interfax cited him as saying.
Vladimir Putin during the meeting recalled the discussion between the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Economic Development on the forecast of socio-economic development for 2017-2019, noting the need to consider the Central Bank's position on this matter.
A professor of the RANEPA Chair of Economics and Finance of the Public Sector, Lyudmila Pronina, told Vestnik Kavkaza that the most likely that pensions of working pensioners in 2017 will not be indexed.
"And I think that the indexation for non-working pensioners will be a very big issue as well," the expert noted.
"In 2015, all 40 state programs, which are approved together with the law on the federal budget, were sequestrated by 10%. Most of these programs are social, so it is important to optimize them now," Lyudmila Pronina said.
