Vladimir Putin Calls For Observing Budgetary Discipline

Russian President Vladimir Putin drew the government's attention to the fact that all the expenditures, projected in the budget for the next year, "must be based on clear and explicit sources of revenues." Opening a traditional conference on Monday with members of the Cabinet of Ministers, the President said that "no expenditures should be planned above what would be received in the revenue part of the budget." Everything else, noted the head of state, is the subject of the negotiating process between the government and the parliament (State Duma), but it must go on within the framework of the mentioned "golden rule." It is "dangerous to bypass it," pointed out Vladimir Putin.