Dmitry Medvedev holds a meeting of the Government Commission on Budgetary Planning
“The future budget must reflect our medium- and long-term plans. It must be a modernisation budget. And all social commitments – spending on education, healthcare, and support for maternity, families and childhood – must be implemented unfailingly.”
Introductory remarks by Dmitry Medvedev
Good afternoon to everybody once again.
This is our first meeting of the Government Commission on Budgetary Planning with the new members. As you know, the preparation of the 2013-2015 budget, which takes new budget rules into account, is one of the seven major government tasks that I mentioned at the very beginning of our work together. On May 28, I approved a plan of measures, the implementation of the programme for improving the efficiency of budget spending this year. Recently, on the 14th, at the meeting on budget planning, we discussed the Finance Ministry proposal on optimising spending, and we developed some general rules. We agreed that, taking into account the comments made, the issue should be submitted to this commission, and that we should take a final decision on all characteristics of the federal budget in early July.
I’d like to highlight a general but important point. The budget should be balanced and realistic. Budget policy should stimulate business activity – both Russian and foreign business – and most importantly, it should be predictable for the long term.
In the coming years, we will probably have to work under rather difficult conditions. The unstable situation on global financial markets, oil price movements – all these factors will exert considerable influence on our country’s development. Therefore we should link spending with financial risks and plan for reductions in budget revenue following Russia’s accession to the WTO, clearly define the priorities for funding, accumulate revenues from the raw-material sector in the Reserve Fund and do our best to reduce the so-called non-oil-and-gas deficit. That should be done by increasing the efficiency of federal spending and by embracing a target programme format of the federal budget.
The future budget must reflect our medium- and long-term plans. It must be a modernisation budget. And all social commitments – spending on education, healthcare, and support for maternity, families and childhood – must be implemented unfailingly. This is our social priority. Nothing that helps to determine quality of life should be subject to reviewing. Let’s go down to work.
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