The Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Budget and Financial Markets, the senator from the Ulyanovsk Region Sergey Ryabukhin, visited the studio of Vestnik Kavkaza today. During the program Tribune he spoke about key issues of Russia's budget for 2016. In the first place, he noted that the adopted budget is "intense but balanced."
Ryabukhin reminded that this year the government paid special attention to the adoption of the budget. "All the macroeconomic indicators, including falling oil prices, were rechecked once again. The structure of revenues in the consolidated budget of the country includes 26-28% of the oil and gas revenues, and in the federal budget it is about 50%. Of course, this is a very high rate, and it is necessary to reduce it to 6.8% to gain the independence of our economy on the price situation on the world oil and gas markets, the president has already ordered the government to do it, but a carefully considered program of diversification is still being created," the senator warned.
"The budget for 2016 envisages revenues of 13.7 trillion rubles and expenditure of 16.1 trillion rubles. That is, the budget deficit will amount to 2.4 trillion rubles or 3% of GDP (87 trillion rubles). And the 3% is stimulating the volume of the deficit, it stimulates more efficient use of the federal funds sent to the real economy, economic restructuring and social costs," the Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Budget and Financial Markets assured.
The budget will retain a social orientation, about 28% of the funds will be sent to the social sphere. At the same time, Sergey Ryabukhin said that the government is preparing the social part of the budget, taking into account many of the recommendations of the Federal Assembly. "The Cabinet has increased the amount of budget credits to balance the regional budgets and to replace the commercial loans. Our regions in recent years have borrow a lot of money: 2.1 trillion rubles of the regional debt and 0.33 trillion rubles of the municipality debts. This year we were able to convince to increase the term of a credit from 3 up to 5 years and improve the conditions for receiving budget credits," the senator noted.
The amount of 50 billion rubles for the modernization of schools and construction of new training places will also be allocated in this year. "This is a very important moment, because about 9 thousand schools operate in a second or third shift, and this is more than 80 thousand students. The program of construction and modernization of school places until 2025 of 2.7 trillion rubles has been already adopted, and the first 50 billion rubles will be allocated already in 2016," he stressed.
In general, the Federal Assembly will continue to monitor the spending of budget funds, transparency and adequacy of its distribution in the next year. "It is important that we consider the methods of distribution of funds not only in the framework of the budget committee, but also our colleagues from the specialized committees do it. It is also important that these funds will efficiently spent in the coming fiscal year. Together with the Audit Chamber we will continue monitoring the effectiveness of expenditure of the federal budget," the Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Budget and Financial Markets said.
You can read the full text version of the program in the ‘Interviews’ section of our site.
