Federal budget to receive $986m in extra revenues in first six months of 2002

The plan for the collection of revenues to the federal budget is expected to be overfulfilled by RUR31bn ($986m) in the first six months of 2002, Gennady Yezhov, press secretary of Deputy Prime Minister, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, reported. He pointed out that RUR471.95bn ($15.01bn) were in fact collected to the budget in the first quarter, whereas the target amount was RUR448.18bn ($14.26bn). The corresponding figures for the second quarter were RUR532.7bn ($16.94bn) and RUR525.55bn ($16.72bn) respectively.

Nonetheless, Yezhov remarked that this overfulfillment had been achieved mainly at the expense of additional social tax revenues, which amounted to RUR35.8bn ($1.14bn). Therefore, without these social tax revenues, which cannot be used for financing expenditures, about RUR5bn ($159.03m) in tax revenues were undercollected in the first six months of this year. At the same time the government commission on taxes and revenues set the tax targets on the basis of an estimated oil price of $23.5 per barrel, whereas federal budget revenues can be financed if the oil price is $18.5 per barrel. So, all budget expenditures in the first quarter were financed in full.

Corrections to the plans for collection of revenues for the third quarter, made by the Finance Ministry in cooperation with other federal agencies, will allow for partially offsetting the undercollection in the first six months of 2002. Thus, the target amount for the Tax Ministry has been increased by RUR13.4bn - $426.21m (by RUR9.9bn - $314.89m not taking into account the single social tax), and the respective sum for the State Customs Committee was raised by RUR8.4bn ($267.18m).