State Duma budget committee to consider bill on 2003 budget next week

The first meeting of the State Duma budget committee will be held onSeptember 3-5, 2002. At the meeting deputies are expected to discuss thebudget draft for 2003, Valery Galchenko, deputy head of the committee, toldjournalists today. According to him, the State Duma will carry out thefirst reading of the bill on September 25.The deputy admitted that last weekend the bill on the federal budget for2003 was submitted to the State Duma. The document envisages revenuestotaling some 2.418 trillion rubles (about $76.64bn) and expendituresamounting to about 2.346 trillion rubles (about $74.36bn). So the budget'ssurplus is to be 72.15bn rubles ($2.28bn). Galchenko stressed that 51.415bnrubles ($1.63bn) of the surplus were planned to be allocated for paying offRussia's foreign debts in 2003 and 20.735bn rubles ($657.2m) would betransferred to the reserve fund..