The government introduced the concept of new budget rules

The Ministry of Finance has proposals for new budget rules, and they are already being considered by the government, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov told reporters.

“Our task as the Ministry of Finance is to determine the volume of oil and gas revenues in such a way as to minimize dependence on external conditions,” the minister said, RBC correspondent reports.

According to Siluanov, in the near future, the National Wealth Fund (NWF) will become the main source of financing expenses, along with income. This picture will be relevant even if the Ministry of Finance returns to the domestic borrowing market in 2023–2024. This year, the Ministry of Finance does not plan to borrow on the market, Siluanov said earlier. For 2022, the old budget rule, which assumed the accumulation of foreign currency in the NWF from additional oil and gas revenues, was suspended, and RBC wrote that it would be impossible to return to it under the conditions of sanctions and freezing of foreign exchange reserves.

Siluanov said that the Ministry of Finance is considering the possibility of completely abandoning the cut-off price for oil ($40 per barrel in 2017 prices), above which oil and gas revenues were sent to the NWF. “It is possible to fix a certain amount of forecast oil and gas revenues, which would be formed based on the data for the last three years – the average volume of oil and gas revenues [budget]. In order to minimize the impact of volatility in production volumes, prices and exchange rates,” the minister explained.