A third of budget expenditures fell on closed items

As of March 25, the share of federal budget expenditures not distributed by direction reached almost a third.Historically, a significant part of such expenses fell on the secret expenses of the power bloc.

Since the beginning of the year, as of March 25, the amount of federal budget expenditures classified by functional areas (for example, social policy, national economy) amounted to almost 5 trillion rubles, and total expenditures (as of March 24) reached 7.37 trillion rubles, follows from the data of the state portal "Electronic budget" (its operators are the Ministry of Finance and the Treasury). The difference - about 2.4 trillion rubles, or 32% of total expenditures - represents appropriations whose belonging to one or another direction the financial authorities considered it necessary to hide.

Bloomberg was the first to draw attention to this, writing that "Russia keeps an unprecedented one-third of its budget spending hidden from public view." The agency cites independent economist Oleksandra Suslina, who said that the increase in the share of closed spending indicates an increase in spending directly or indirectly related to the military operation in Ukraine. “It is logical to assume that the costs of new territories are also included in closed costs,” she said.

Traditionally, experts classified such expenses as secret (they were described as secret annexes to the law on the federal budget). The share of closed expenses at the end of 2021 amounted to 15.2%, and in the first half of 2022 it increased to 18.6%, RBC wrote, citing data from the Accounts Chamber. As a rule, historically, the main part of the closed budget expenditures was concentrated in the "power" sections - national defense and national security and law enforcement.

It is impossible to say how much the share of closed expenses in 2022 was, since the authorities do not disclose the details of budget spending in areas for 2022. In the early summer of last year, the Ministry of Finance reduced the format for publishing spending data, citing sanctions pressure.

Until 2022, the authorities provided complete information on the total expenditures in functional areas: for example, the executed expenditures under the National Defense section in 2021 amounted to 3.57 trillion rubles. (this figure includes both open and closed costs). The Ministry of Finance provided similar full information in the autumn in the draft federal budget for 2023: the draft provided for an increase in defense spending to almost 5 trillion rubles. (17% of the total budget allocations), spending on security and law enforcement - up to 4.4 trillion rubles. (15% of all budget expenditures).

According to the data of the Electronic Budget portal, among the open expenditures as of March 25, the Social Policy section was the most spent — over 1.3 trillion rubles. 628 billion rubles were spent under the "National Economy" section, 539 billion rubles - under the "National Defense" section, and 437 billion rubles - for interbudgetary transfers to the regions.

RBC sent a request to the Ministry of Finance.