Page 45 - RusRPTJuly18

dividend forecasts for each separate state company available last year.
The decision not to publish separate companies' dividend forecasts is most likely the result of lobbying from Russia's biggest SOEs, namely Gazprom, Rosneft, and Transneft, who are looking to dodge taxes. Other SOEs like Zarubezhneft' or the Moscow airport Sheremetyevo also pay dividend rates below the 50% mark.
Russia's Finance Ministry warned that it would have a RUB204bn ($3.3bn) hole in budget revenues in it if state-owned enterprises (SOE) don’t pay out the 50% of profits they have been ordered to by the government ,InterfaxandV edomosti dailysaidonApril23citingunnamed sources in the government.
There are reportedly 217 different revenue streams for the federal budget lacking any means of verification , hindering the reliability of revenue forecasts. Kudrin is throwing himself at a problem that Medvedev and his preferred partners -- Dvorkovich, Shuvalov, and Oreshkin -- failed to fix. Two are now out of political office. Kudrin was also just handed responsibility for fulfilling Putin's latest May decrees. He's bringing sexy back to the Audit Chamber and using his MinFin connections and reputation to do it.
VEB published a macro projection for 2018-2021 with a base case featuring a pension age increase by half a year per year starting in 2020 . The very next day, the projection was deleted from VEB's website. The Minister of Economy announced at the "Russia: New Opportunities" Forum that such an increase is indeed being discussed, with several proposals on the topic already formulated. When prodded by journalists on where such discussions are occurring, he replied "in society." Both stories mark continued paralysis on pension reform, despite an increasingly evident need to do something: the number of workers per pensioner continues to shrink, as do pension benefits in real terms.
The government has postponed indexation of the tariff in the system of charging for trucks "Platon" from July 1, 2018 as of July 1, 2019. The corresponding decree was signed by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. The decision to postpone the tariff increase was taken following the results of the meeting at Rosavtodor. Representatives of the Ministry of Transport, FKU "Roads of Russia", cargo carriers and associations of participants of the motor transport market participated in it. The deputy director of the state policy department in the road sector of the Ministry of Transport, Grigory Volkov, noted that the issue of indexing will be discussed after strengthening control over violators and providing the results of this work to freight carriers.
Russia's oil and gas sectors were a key source of tax revenues in 2017,
according to data from the Federal Tax Service (FNS). The two extractive sectors (that also included the mining industries) provided some 29.2% of all revenue to Russia's consolidated federal budget, which includes both federal and regional budgets. That figure is up over 2016, when it reached 26.5%.
Increasing Mineral Extraction Tax (NDPI) returns drove some 40% of revenue growth in 2017 over 2016, or RUB2.8 trillion ($50bn). The key dynamic at play over the last year was rising oil prices, which increased an average 25% y/y, according to Dmitri Kulikov at the domestic rating agency
RUSSIA Country Report July 2018 www.intellinews.com