Page 44 - RusRPTJuly18

resources, which is supposed to back up the six-year spending drive under President's Vladimir Putin's May Decree and spur growth beyond the structural ceiling of 1.5-2%. The bill sets up FNS as the single interlocutor agency for tax reporting, which would be fully digitalised. The initiative that would half the time and cost of reporting was reportedly reviewed by a governmental commission on June 18 and could come into effect for 2019 reports to be submitted as of January 1 2020.
Russia's state development bank Vnesheconombank (VEB) is likely to get a mandate of a pension fund , as the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) and the Finance Ministry try to decide how to mobilise pension savings of 36mn Russians that are by default held by the VEB, Vedomosti a nd Interfax reported on June 13 citing the Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Moisseev. Kremlin insider and heavyweight bureaucrat Igor Shuvalov was recently appointed head of VEB, marking its expanding role in state management of the economy along with the Audit Chamber, which is now headed by another heavy weight ex-Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin that is also getting new powers. Pension savings of those Russians that did not indicate any particular fund or programme, so called molchuni or "silent" funds are automatically transferred to VEB, making a RUB1.7 trillion portfolio ($27bn) on which the bank earned a return of 8.6% in 2017. This makes twice as much as average 3.8% investment income of non-state pension funds (NPFs). Now the government might qualify VEB as an NPF, which would broaden its investment options and is seen as a positive measure for the "silent" pensioners.
Russia's Finance Ministry has finalised the proposals on so-called "tax manoeuvre" package of tax reforms in the oil and gas sector, Kommersant daily reported on June 12. The draft will be presented to the cabinet and then passed to State Duma in June.
Russia's Finance Ministry does not intend to soften the "budget rule" and add revenues earned above the $40 per barrel oil price cut off point to spending, the Deputy Finance Minister Vladimir Kolychev told the press. The budget rules says all income made from oil taxes over $40 has to be added to the reserves funds and can’t be spent.
Kolychev also reiterated that the Finance Ministry does not intend to increase the borrowing in 2018 , but did not elaborate on the recently adopted plan to create and infrastructure fund worth RUB3 trillion in 2019 under Putin's May Decree, most of which would be borrowed.
The new Audit Chamber head Alexei Kudrin estimates a RUB43bn ($694mn) shortfall in dividend payments if the state-owned enterprises (SOE) don't pay what they are supposed to, based a on document accessed by RBK.
The Duma has just adopted a bill that reduces dividend payments into the federal budget by 34% to 250.7bn ($4bn ). But the Duma law doesn't account for reduced dividend payments based on forecasts from Rosimushchestvo (RI), a state agency administering various properties across Russia, worth RUB43.2bn.
MinFin considers it impossible to structurally analyse where dividend payments are coming from because the government stopped making the
RUSSIA Country Report July 2018 www.intellinews.com