Budget revenue reached 14.99 trillion rubles, some 1.5 trillion rubles more than initially planned.

The Finance Ministry estimates that the federal budgetary deficit in 2017 will be 1.6 percent of the GDP, the Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said on December 26.

“We estimated the deficit at 2.5 percent for this year. Then we refined our forecast to 2.2 percent. We then made a different assessment that was 1.8 percent. Now we can say that the ultimate figure is a budgetary deficit of 1.6 percent. The deficit will be somewhere around 1.5 trillion rubles in size. Both the oil and gas revenues, as well as the non-oil revenues are growing this year compared to the original plan,” the Minister said. Non-oil budgetary deficit will stand at slightly more than 8.2 percent of the GDP, Siluanov said.

According to Siluanov, this year Russia’s treasury will receive oil and gas revenues of 172 billion rubles more than planned, and non-oil-related income of 117 billion rubles more than expected.

“The costs will be financed on a smaller scale than we had planned. This development is first and foremost due to the fact that we have a number of departments that do not have the time to implement the program, and these costs will be transferred to the next year. As a result, our estimates have been reduced. These will be deferred expenses that will be transferred to next year,” he said.

Siluanov said that some departments this year were allowed to transfer unused budgetary funds to the following year, and these agencies have made fewer requests for advances because we believe that these funds will be used. “Most likely, the same arrangement will continue next year,” the Minister said.

According to the Ministry of Finance, federal budgetary revenues in 2017 will stand at 14.99 trillion rubles (16.3 percent of the GDP), which is 1.5 trillion rubles higher than what had been planned in the first edition of the 2017 budget. About 2/3 of revenue growth is attributable to increases in oil and gas revenues. However, according to the applicable transitional provisions and the budgetary rules, these revenues will not be used to finance additional spending.

Non-oil federal budgetary revenues in 2017 will stand at 9.022 trillion rubles (9.8 percent of the GDP), almost seven percent over the plan.

Expenditures amounted to 16.66 trillion rubles, or 18.1 percent of the GDP. The increase of 424 billion rubles was due to increases in non-oil revenues due to rapid economic activity recovery and improved revenue-collection practices.