Speaking ahead of a Cabinet session to consider a draft budget for 2007 and a three-year financial plan Thursday, the source said that the Finance Ministry's latest calculations showed higher budget revenues than an earlier forecast, but that spending would grow even faster.
According to the source, excluding Stabilization Fund receipts, the deficit could be 170.4 billion rubles ($6.3 billion) in 2007, 163 billion rubles ($6 billion) in 2008 and 132 billion rubles ($4.9 billion) in 2009.
The source said increased expenditures were due to additional funds allocated on demographic policy; national projects in housing, healthcare, education, and agriculture; the Armed Forces and defense; the removal of cross-subsidizing in natural monopolies; as well as on increasing the state's stake in the charter capitals of energy companies established from electricity monopoly Unified Energy System.
Due to the significant increase in budget expenditures, the Finance Ministry has been instructed to draft proposals to balance the budget and submit them to the government by August 1 for consideration by a budget drafting commission, the source said.
The ministry said there were two ways to balance the budget in 2007-2009: bringing the remaining 2006 budget funds to the 2007 budget, as well as a clarification of Russia's social and economic development forecast for 2007-09, which could increase the budget's revenues.
The federal budget's revenues in 2007, including Stabilization Fund receipts, are planned at 6.63 trillion rubles ($245.41 billion), in 2008, at 6.87 trillion rubles ($254.29 billion), and in 2009 at 7.25 trillion rubles ($268.36 billion), a cabinet source said.
