Economic Guidelines are Obscure and Not Underpinned by Financial Resources

On June 13, Vladimir Putin presented a fundamental document of strategic planning; the above document determines the main guidelines of the budgetary policy for the next three years - the Budget Message of the President of the Russian Federation.
There are no significant differences fr om the two previous documents and system problems of the budgetary system still remain topical, in particular:

• Importance to ensure stability of the federal budget due to a reduction of oil and gas revenues on the one side and increase in "lasting" social obligations on the other side;

• Lack of coordination between strategic and budgetary planning and weak prioritizing of expenditures of the budgetary system;

• Reform of the budgetary sector does not ensure higher availability and quality of public services,

• Low efficiency and low quality of management of state property, including sovereign funds;

• Unaccomplished reform of the pension system and other.

At the same time, a number of measures -- set in Budget Messages of 2011 and 2012 -- aimed at achievement of equilibrium and efficiency of the budgetary system (for example, introduction of the budget rule and creation of the legislative base for formation and execution of budgets of all the levels on the basis of government and municipal programs) defused to some extent the problems, but those measures alone are insufficient in a situation wh ere unfavorable foreign and domestic macroeconomic factors build up.

 

Due to the above, further analysis of the Budget Message is carried out through the prism of adequacy and timeliness of lines of the mid-term budgetary policy to the existing challenges.
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Т.V. Tischenko, PhD (Economics), Senior Researcher of the Budget Policy Department

Monday, 17.06.2013