Regional Budgets in 2021: Safety Cushion has been Created

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

In 2021, the performance indexes of consolidated regional budgets (growth rates; total budget revenues and own tax plus non-tax revenues; nominal and real volumes of aggregate budget surplus) updated the all-time high of the last decade. In 2022, this will provide an opportunity to mitigate the effects of the crisis, and the reduction in the share of expensive commercial loans servicing will increase the debt sustainability of the regions against the backdrop of rising interest rates in the economy.

The structure of regional expenditures in 2021 remained stable, and its main changes were related to the completion of anti-crisis measures in 2020 and the reorientation of some expenditures to areas related to capital investments (housing and utilities sector and transport).

Key words: regions’ budgets, revenues of regional budgets, expenditures of regional budgets, intergovernmental fiscal transfers, regional debt.

JEL-codes: H61, H62, H63, H71, H72, H74, H77.