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around 10 billion rubles ($111.6 million) per year, which does not come close to the funds intended for the occupied territories in Ukraine. These territories received more than a trillion rubles ($11.2 billion) in 2023 and will continue to receive comparable amounts of money in the foreseeable future.
Costs are mounting to repair the damage caused by floods in several regions in May. The federal government will transfer 490 million rubles ($5.3 million) from its own reserve fund to one of the hardest-hit regions, the Orenburg Region, to be spent on social support. The region has spent more than twice this amount on payments already, according to official data, but total damages are estimated at 40 billion rubles ($432.4 million). In the Kurgan Region, which experienced its peak floods over the past weeks, the regional government has doubled the maximum amount of compensation payable to residents to 100,000 rubles ($1,081) (albeit most have received smaller sums), with total damages estimated between 4 and 9 billion rubles ($43-97 million). 2024 budgets were adopted with total planned expenditures amounting to 144 billion rubles ($1.6 billion) in Orenburg and 78 billion ($843 million) in Kurgan, making it likely that both regions will need further federal transfers. Meanwhile, flooding continues in several regions. Authorities in the Tyumen Region expect waters to peak in the first week of May, and meteorologists expect a new wave of floods to begin in the coming weeks in Siberia and Northwestern Russia. Several regions in the South Urals that experienced major floods over the past weeks are not ready for wildfire season either, according to the Federal Forestry Agency.
The federal government also expects regions to pay more attention to the renovation of dilapidated housing: this was mentioned as a major problem at a recent meeting of the All-Russian Association for the Development of Local Self-Governance, which discussed “key performance indicators” to be introduced for the evaluation of municipal leaders. Regions and municipalities have had to raise their expenditures on housing repairs over the past years due to construction material and labor becoming more expensive. Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin recently said that the total price tag could be around 4 trillion rubles ($43.2 billion) between 2024 and 2030, even though the federal budget significantly cut funds allocated for housing this year. Another politically sensitive issue that the Kremlin expects regions to address, but they are unlikely to receive higher budget transfers for, is the renovation of utility networks. Putin even highlighted this topic in his state-of-the-nation speech in February. It appears that at least part of the estimated 4.5 trillion rubles ($49.1 billion) that will have to be spent on this problem will be in the form of preferential loans through VEB, the government’s main investment vehicle.
6.1.4 Budget dynamics - National Projects
To achieve long-term national development goals in Russia, new national
projects and programs are being prepared for launch. This was stated by
113 RUSSIA Country Report June 2024 www.intellinews.com