Russia Matters, 9/6/24
Russia’s budget deficit declined to just 331 billion rubles ($3.7 billion) or 0.2% of GDP for the first eight months of the year, according to Bloomberg. Russia recorded a budget surplus of 767 billion rubles ($8.5 billion) in August, thanks to almost 1 trillion rubles of increased revenue from non oil-and-gas sectors compared to July, this news agency reported. The Russian government’s revenues from taxes on oil and gas surged too, totaling 778.6 billion rubles ($8.7 billion) last month, up by 21% from a year ago, according to Bloomberg. In good news for Russian consumers, consumer prices in the week through Sept. 2 fell 0.02%, according to data from the Federal Statistics Service release, this news agency reported. On the negative side, S&P Global’s Purchasing Managers’ Index for Russian manufacturing fell to 52.1 last month compared to 53.6 in July, according to MT.
The assumption it seems behind this post may be that this situation is healthy,when in reality such deficits are 1.non-repayable like the national debt is merely a financial statement of year on year investment and spending outside Govt 2 somehow have a moral texture when neither good nor bad but are merely tools towards growing the whole economy// if Russia has now again returned wholly towards fiscal conservativism after the Ukraine stimulus- compare say with USA in 1941- and bought the more into orthodoxy which seemed likely after Putins post election cabinet reshuffle it will stall the economy. Russian inflation is caused mostly by being short of at least 1,000,000 workers and has little to do with too much money flowing, the contant error of say the British Monetary Policy Committee. If this post is just a neutral statement then so be it.