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secondly, it will raise rates and further increase the cost of borrowing for business. <...> If we want more spending, then we will get higher rates in the economy and a decrease in business activity. And how effective will these additional expenses be then? Therefore, of course, the most correct decision is the redistribution of what I say is the “budget pie” inside,” he stressed.
According to him, this is a “difficult choice”, but it “must be made”. At the same time, spending adjustments can also lead to a change in the fiscal rule. “For the time being, we do not want to correct the budget rule as a whole, in the database. But if we see the need to adjust budget expenditures, budget expenditures, then this year there may be some temporary deviations,” Siluanov admitted.
In the past, temporary adjustments to the fiscal rule have provided additional spending that would normally be prohibited by the fiscal rule. For example, since 2023, the authorities (after a suspension in the crisis year 2022) have returned to the mechanism of the budget rule, which limits budget spending, but with a transitional period that allowed increased marginal budget spending in 2023 and 2024. Thus, in 2023, federal spending, according to the law on the budget, will exceed those calculated according to the budget rule (in the form in which it should be fully operational from 2025) by 2.9 trillion rubles.
Revenues of the Russian Federal Customs Service (FCS) stood at 6.2 trillion rubles ($74bn) or 99.94% of the forecast for 2022 and dropped by 13% year on year, the Russian Accounts Chamber said in its report released on Tuesday.
"The deviation in the amount of revenues against the target was driven by the decline in volumes of taxable imports from the non-CIS countries and the decline of the US dollar average rate vs. the forecast value," Auditor of the Accounts Chamber Andrey Baturkin said in a comment.
The Federal Customs Service and its subordinate authorities provided customs fee benefits amounting to 1.09 trillion rubles ($13bn) in the last year.
Utilization of expenditures by the Customs Service was 98.79% or 90.5bn rubles ($1.1bn).
The Accounts Chamber also noted the difference in customs import duty rates for electronic devices used to consume products containing nicotine (the so-called IQOS and vaping devices) and other products with similar functional capabilities (like smoking pipes and hookah pipes). The import duty rate set by the Eurasian Economic Commission is 0% for tobacco heating and vaping devices and 13% for products with similar functional capabilities. "In our opinion, it is advisable to level the tariffs by increasing the zero rate of the import customs duty to at least 13%," Baturkin said.
94 RUSSIA Country Report July 2023 www.intellinews.com