Page 75 - RusRPTFeb21

safe and high-quality roads, improvement of workforce productivity and employment, culture, and demography exceeded 98%. Spending on international cooperation and exports, environment, and digital economy exceeded 97%.
Spending on support of entrepreneurship and small and medium-sized businesses was a little short of 97% of the planned amount, while spending on healthcare amounted to 96.2% of the planned figure. The national education project was the only plan, where spending fell below 90% of the planned amount to 86.4%, the ministry said.
6.2 ​Debt
Russia - External debt 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 Jan-Jun ‘18
Budget: external debt (USD bn)
2,363.52 2,844.56 2,729.43 2,169.01 2,073.22 2,096.24 1,005.41
Budget: external debt (% GDP)
29.02 31.73 29.07 37.89 39.83 32.84 /
source: CEIC, CBR
In 2020, Russia’s gross foreign debt fell $21.3bn or 4.3% to $470bn,
according to data from the Central bank. A year earlier, in 2019, the gross debt volume increased 8% driven solely by a rise in sovereign bond issuance.
Last year, external leverage shrunk in all major segments with the largest falls recorded in the debt of commercial banks (-6% y/y), the government (-5.5% y/y) and non-financial corporates (-4% y/y).
The peak volume of Russia’s external debt was reached on 1 July 2014 ($733bn) – by 1 January 2021 debt levels had fallen by 36%.
During that period, the leverage of Russian banks fell the most (-65%), followed by the non-financial corporate sector (-29%). However, total sovereign debt in 2014-20 period increased by 16%, but that was the result of increased foreign ownership of ruble-denominated government bonds (OFZ): in that period, the OFZ part of sovereign debt rose by 49%, while the share of Eurobonds fell by 9%.
Deleveraging set to continue in 2021. One prime driver behind Russia’s deleveraging is linked to the risk of new US sanctions. These sanctions have already effectively stopped Russia’s main state banks from issuing $-denominated bonds from 2018. Persistent geopolitical risks force other Russian entities to switch away from foreign borrowing to the domestic bond market. As a result, we note high levels of net capital outflows – last year, such outflows rose to $48bn from $22bn in 2019 and $64bn in 2018. In 2021, we expect to see $30bn in capital outflows, while gross external debt could fall further to $455bn.
75 ​RUSSIA Country Report​ February 2021 ​ ​www.intellinews.com