Regions’ Budgets in January-April 2020: Contraction of Revenues Has Become Inevitable

Alexander N. Deryugin – Senior Researcher of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; Researcher of the Gaidar Institute (Moscow, Russia). Е-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

April saw crisis developments in the economy that had fully affected regions’ consolidated budgets revenues: revenues compared to April 2019 decreased by 20.9% and PIT demonstrated maximum decline over 20 years (-18.7%). At the period-end for 4 months of 2020 revenues growth rates were in the red (-1.2%). Had it not been for the increase of fiscal transfers from the federal budget by 28.6% (including advance ones) the reduction of regions’ revenues would have been more noticeable.

Despite the fact that the current crisis and the 2008–2009 crisis were induced by different causes, relative growth rates of the consolidated budgets of various regions demonstrate similar trends.

Expenditures of regional and local budgets for 4 months of 2020 peaked by 18.5% which was both due to the implementation of national projects and to anti-crisis measures and their structure shifted towards investments.

Key words: regions’ budgets, regions’ budgets revenues, regions’ budgets expenditures, regions’ public debt, budget loans, bank loans.