## 1rusea2019002

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---

### A. Introduction
- Fiscal transparency defined as “openness toward the public at large about government structure and functions, fiscal policy intentions, public sector accounts, and projections.” (Kopits and Craig (1998))
- Roles and benefits of fiscal transparency:
  - Increases investor confidence, facilitates efficient allocation of public resources, and reduces opportunities for corruption.
  - Reduces “fiscal illusion” (Sedmihradska and Haas (2013)) by lowering overstatement of benefits and understatement of costs/risks of government programs.
  - Decreases informational asymmetry between politicians and voters, improving accountability, reducing political business cycles, and increasing political competition.
  - Strengthens enforcement of fiscal rules and deters illicit behavior via fuller public information.
- Russia-specific observations:
  - Russia scores relatively well on fiscal transparency and has made significant progress over the last 5 years.
  - Fiscal statistics should be compiled by an independent statistics agency and expanded to include sub-soil assets, public private partnerships, and pension liabilities.
  - Credibility of the budget could be enhanced by subjecting macroeconomic and budget forecasts to greater independent scrutiny, discontinuing extrabudgetary expenditure by the National Welfare Fund (NWF), and reducing the share of classified expenditure.
  - Surveillance of fiscal risks could be strengthened by publishing a regular report on the state-owned enterprise (SOE) sector, extending the horizon of long-term fiscal forecasts to cover 50 years, and regularly publishing a comprehensive report on fiscal risks.
- Public perceptions: 37 percent of respondents in Russia list lack of transparency and accountability for public expenditure as one of the top three causes of corruption (European Union average: 33 percent). (Bondarenko, Gudkov, and Krasilnikova (2013))

### B. Cross-Country Evidence from European Countries
- Data sources and indices:
  - Open Budget Survey (International Budget Partnership): index based on 109 questions covering 115 countries since 2006; focuses on de jure measures and central governments.
  - IMF Fiscal Transparency Evaluations (FTEs): in-depth assessments over 36 criteria grouped in three pillars (fiscal reporting; fiscal forecasting and budgeting; fiscal risk analysis and management); a fourth pillar on natural resource revenue transparency was recently introduced.
- Key empirical correlations (Europe-focused):
  - Western European countries generally rank higher on the 2017 Open Budget Survey; CESEE countries are weaker on average; some Emerging Europe countries (Russia and Romania) perform well.
  - Correlation between Average FTE Rating and Open Budget Index in 2017: 0.78.
  - Russia’s 2014 FTE placed it above all other countries in Emerging Europe and near advanced European countries such as Portugal, Ireland, and Austria.
  - Correlation between Average FTE Rating and average CDS spreads (2010–17, income-adjusted residuals): -0.33.
  - Correlation between Average FTE Rating and Efficiency of Public Investment (income-adjusted): 0.53.
  - Correlation between Average FTE Rating and Revenue Efficiency (income-adjusted): 0.34.
  - Correlation between Average FTE Rating and Control of Corruption (income-adjusted): 0.55.
- Measures used:
  - Efficiency of public investment: IMF Investment and Capital Stock Dataset — maps public investment inputs to infrastructure outputs (road network length, electricity production, access to water, hospital beds, secondary teachers).
  - Revenue efficiency: average of PIT efficiency and VAT C-efficiency.
  - Control of Corruption Index: Worldwide Governance Indicators (aggregates 30 data sources).
- Caveats:
  - Perception-based corruption measures are imperfect; WGI includes experience-based surveys to reduce bias.
  - Statistical relationships are correlations not causal proofs; omitted variables and reverse causality cannot be ruled out.
- Panel regression evidence:
  - Sample: 102 countries over 6 years — 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2015, and 2017.
  - Dependent variable: Control of Corruption Index (WGI).
  - Main independent variable: Open Budget Index (International Budget Partnership).
  - Controls: PPP-adjusted GDP per capita (World Bank WDI), voice and accountability, political stability and absence of violence, rule of law (WGI), ease of doing business (World Bank Doing Business Survey), and a dummy for commodity exporters (IMF WEO definition).
  - Estimation methods: fixed effects and random effects; time-fixed effects included.
  - Main quantitative finding: improving a country’s Open Budget Index by one standard deviation (or 24 units) is associated with an increase in the Control of Corruption Index (standard deviation about 0.86) by about 0.05 (from the most comprehensive regression specifications).
- Consistency: Similar results reported in Haque and Neanidis (2009), Luna and Montes (2017), and IMF (2019a).

### Causality and evidence on budget openness and corruption
- Regressions mitigate omitted-variable risk but do not fully resolve causality among corruption, institutions, and economic development.
- Results are consistent with experimental designs and natural experiments reviewed in IMF (2019a), which show that improved budget openness can increase government efficiency and reduce opportunities for corruption, particularly when combined with:
  - a high degree of press freedom, and
  - wide access to digital technologies.

### Comparison of Russia’s 2014 and 2019 Fiscal Transparency Evaluations
- 2014 FTE findings:
  - Russia was an early volunteer for IMF fiscal transparency evaluation and one of the best performing emerging markets in 2014.
  - Fiscal reports provided a relatively complete, timely, and accurate picture of general government finances, placing Russia between the averages for the emerging and advanced European countries that undertook an FTE.
  - Fiscal forecasts and budgets were prepared within a comprehensive legal framework and provided a clear picture of medium-term economic and budgetary developments.
  - Fiscal risks management identified as a relative weakness except for strong procedures for disclosing and controlling risks related to budgetary contingencies, guarantees, and subnational governments; practices only slightly better than the average for emerging Europe.
- 2019 updated evaluation and changes since 2014:
  - Significant progress in improving fiscal transparency over the last 5 years, with the largest improvement in fiscal risk analysis.
  - Fiscal reporting improvements:
    - annual publication of a detailed account of the cost of tax expenditures,
    - adoption of a program classification as the basis for budget appropriations,
    - publication of the first official estimates of the volume and value of sub-soil oil, gas, and mineral reserves.
  - Budget accessibility enhanced by publication of a new Citizen’s Budget and pilots in participatory budgeting in more than half of the regions.
  - Fiscal risk disclosure improved with publication of a comprehensive Fiscal Risks Report and longer-term (to 2036) macroeconomic and fiscal scenarios.
  - These reforms placed Russia’s fiscal risk practices above the average for advanced European countries.

### Remaining gaps and weaknesses in fiscal transparency
- Institutional and reporting gaps:
  - Responsibility for compilation and dissemination of fiscal statistics remains with the Federal Treasury, a semi-autonomous agency of the Ministry of Finance.
  - Over 30,000 SOEs remain outside the scope of consolidated fiscal reporting and many do not publish audited financial statements.
- Fiscal rules and budgetary practice concerns:
  - Fiscal rules have been subject to frequent revisions, undermining credibility as durable anchors for fiscal planning.
  - The proportion of the Federal Budget classified for national security purposes increased from 10 percent in 2010 to 17 percent in 2018.
  - The National Welfare Fund (NWF) has been used previously for extrabudgetary domestic spending (bank recapitalizations, infrastructure spending, subsidized credit for SMEs).
  - Regular budget execution rules were suspended to allow for unlimited carryover and reallocation into the government’s 13 national projects which account for around 10 percent of the federal budget.
- Public-private partnerships:
  - Little progress in tracking the almost 2,500 public private partnership projects, with an estimated value of around 2.2 percent of GDP in 2017.

### Key regression results on the impact of budget openness on Control of Corruption (select coefficients and statistics)
- Dependent variable: Control of corruption.
- Estimation methods: Fixed effects and Random effects across specifications.
- Selected coefficients (coefficient (standard error)):
  - Constant: values include -4.285*** (0.661); -4.244*** (0.393); -4.219*** (0.655); -3.981*** (0.361); -4.026*** (0.677); -3.923*** (0.372); -3.908*** (0.663); -2.964*** (0.292); -3.819*** (0.888); -4.098*** (0.413); -4.285*** (0.661); -3.992*** (0.388); -3.147*** (0.901); -2.377*** (0.303).
  - Log per capita GDP (PPP-adjusted): values include 0.443*** (0.075); 0.436*** (0.044); 0.437*** (0.074); 0.409*** (0.040); 0.416*** (0.076); 0.402*** (0.042); 0.404*** (0.075); 0.298*** (0.033); 0.368*** (0.102); 0.366*** (0.049); 0.443*** (0.075); 0.425*** (0.043); 0.298*** (0.103); 0.191*** (0.037).
  - Open budget index: values include 0.002*** (0.001); 0.003*** (0.001); 0.002** (0.001); 0.002*** (0.001); 0.002*** (0.001); 0.003*** (0.001); 0.002*** (0.001); 0.003*** (0.001); 0.002** (0.001); 0.003*** (0.001); 0.002*** (0.001); 0.002*** (0.001); 0.002** (0.001); 0.002** (0.001).
  - Other governance variables (examples):
    - Voice and accountability: 0.070*** (0.023); 0.121*** (0.022); 0.060** (0.028); 0.145*** (0.028).
    - Political stability and absence of violence: 0.030* (0.017); 0.061*** (0.018); 0.006 (0.021); 0.048** (0.022).
    - Rule of law: 0.082*** (0.024); 0.266*** (0.025); 0.084*** (0.028); 0.232*** (0.029).
    - Ease of doing business: 0.002 (0.002); 0.007*** (0.002); 0.002 (0.002); 0.008*** (0.002).
    - Commodity exporter: -0.488*** (0.123); -0.219*** (0.076).
- Model statistics (across specifications):
  - Number of observations: 539; 539; 539; 539; 539; 539; 539; 539; 395; 395; 539; 539; 395; 395.
  - R-squared: 0.402; 0.415; 0.464; 0.517; 0.430; 0.471; 0.502; 0.703; 0.421; 0.472; 0.402; 0.482; 0.601; 0.789.
  - Number of countries: 102 (in each specification).
- Notes:
  - Robust standard errors are reported in parentheses.
  - Significance codes: *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1.
  - Source for table: Authors' estimates.

### Policy recommendations to improve fiscal transparency in Russia
- State-owned enterprises:
  - Produce a summary document on the financial performance of the SOE sector and require all SOEs to publish audited financial statements.
- Statistical independence:
  - Reinforce the institutional independence of Rosstat; assign to Rosstat the responsibility for dissemination of government finance statistics independently of the government.
- Public private partnerships:
  - Publish annual estimates of the government’s total long-term obligations under PPP contracts.
- Forecast credibility:
  - Publish in budget documentation comparisons between government economic and fiscal forecasts and those of independent bodies and explain any material differences.
- Fiscal rules:
  - Adhere to the current fiscal rule to rebuild buffers and promote intergenerational equity in sharing Russia’s finite natural resource wealth with future generations.
- Budgetary integrity:
  - Discontinue extrabudgetary domestic investment by the NWF.
  - Review and reduce the classified portion of public expenditures.
  - Disclose the costs of quasi-fiscal policy mandates for SOEs in an appendix to the budget and in SOE financial statements.
- Supplementary budget:
  - Return to normal in-year virement rules for the 13 national projects.
- Fiscal risks report:
  - Publish an updated Fiscal Risks Report (FRR) every 3 years and require government to respond within 2 years.
- Long-term analysis:
  - Incorporate 50-year macroeconomic and fiscal projections into the FRR to assess intergenerational fairness under various scenarios for oil prices and other macroeconomic parameters.
- Natural resources:
  - Publish annual estimates of the volume and value of Russia’s natural resource reserves under different price and production scenarios.
  - Consider evaluating natural resource management against Pillar IV of the IMF’s Fiscal Transparency Code.

### Box 1 — Best practices in SOE governance (high-level recommendations aligned with OECD guidelines)
- create and maintain a public SOE register;
- move away from a decentralized SOE oversight model which generates conflicts of interest between policy-setting and ownership, and hinders comprehensive monitoring;
- get rid of special accounting rules for SOEs which hinder transparency and comparability;
- publish an ownership policy document which spells out the rationale for public ownership of each SOE, strikes a balance between active engagement and delegation by the state, and clarifies non-commercial mandates, dividend policies, and rules for fiscal support;
- make boards more independent and professional (for example, by centralizing board selection);
- clarify the links between the income statements and balance sheets of SOEs and those of the budget; and
- gradually incorporate local government SOEs into this framework.

*Source: Authors' estimates and content of the provided IMF chapter.*

### References____________________________________________________________________________ 12

### References____________________________________________________________________________ 12

### A. Introduction
- Fiscal transparency defined (Kopits and Craig (1998)) as “openness toward the public at large about government structure and functions, fiscal policy intentions, public sector accounts, and projections.”
- Fiscal transparency’s roles and benefits highlighted:
  - Increases investor confidence, facilitates efficient allocation of public resources, and reduces opportunities for corruption.
  - Reduces “fiscal illusion” (Sedmihradska and Haas (2013)) by lowering overstatement of benefits and understatement of costs/risks of government programs.
  - Decreases informational asymmetry between politicians and voters, improving accountability, reducing political business cycles, and increasing political competition.
  - Strengthens enforcement of fiscal rules and deters illicit behavior via fuller public information.
- Russia-specific observations:
  - Russia scores relatively well on fiscal transparency and has made significant progress over the last 5 years.
  - Fiscal statistics should be compiled by an independent statistics agency and expanded to include sub-soil assets, public private partnerships, and pension liabilities.
  - Credibility of the budget could be enhanced by subjecting macroeconomic and budget forecasts to greater independent scrutiny, discontinuing extrabudgetary expenditure by the National Welfare Fund (NWF), and reducing the share of classified expenditure.
  - Surveillance of fiscal risks could be strengthened by publishing a regular report on the state-owned enterprise (SOE) sector, extending the horizon of long-term fiscal forecasts to cover 50 years, and regularly publishing a comprehensive report on fiscal risks.
- Public perceptions: Bondarenko, Gudkov, and Krasilnikova (2013) report that 37 percent of respondents in Russia list lack of transparency and accountability for public expenditure as one of the top three causes of corruption (European Union average: 33 percent).

### B. Cross-Country Evidence from European Countries
- Data sources and indices:
  - Open Budget Survey (International Budget Partnership): index based on 109 questions covering 115 countries since 2006; focuses on de jure measures and central governments.
  - IMF Fiscal Transparency Evaluations (FTEs): in-depth assessments over 36 criteria grouped in three pillars (fiscal reporting; fiscal forecasting and budgeting; fiscal risk analysis and management); a fourth pillar on natural resource revenue transparency was recently introduced.
- Key empirical correlations (Europe-focused findings):
  - Western European countries generally rank higher on the 2017 Open Budget Survey; CESEE countries are weaker on average; some Emerging Europe countries (Russia and Romania) perform well.
  - Correlation between Average FTE Rating and Open Budget Index in 2017: 0.78.
  - Russia’s 2014 FTE placed it above all other countries in Emerging Europe and near advanced European countries such as Portugal, Ireland, and Austria.
  - Correlation between Average FTE Rating and average CDS spreads (2010–17, income-adjusted residuals): -0.33 (higher FTE rating associated with lower CDS spreads).
  - Correlation between Average FTE Rating and Efficiency of Public Investment (income-adjusted): 0.53.
  - Correlation between Average FTE Rating and Revenue Efficiency (income-adjusted): 0.34.
  - Correlation between Average FTE Rating and Control of Corruption (income-adjusted): 0.55.
- Measures used:
  - Efficiency of public investment: IMF Investment and Capital Stock Dataset — maps public investment inputs to infrastructure outputs (road network length, electricity production, access to water, hospital beds, secondary teachers).
  - Revenue efficiency: average of PIT efficiency (actual PIT collection as percent of GDP to average statutory PIT rate) and VAT C-efficiency (actual VAT revenue as percent of GDP to product of standard VAT rate and aggregate final consumption as percent of GDP).
  - Control of Corruption Index: Worldwide Governance Indicators (aggregates 30 data sources on perceptions and experiences of corruption).
- Caveats on corruption measures:
  - Perception-based measures are imperfect and persistent; WGI includes experience-based surveys to reduce bias.
  - Statistical relationships are correlations not causal proofs; omitted variables and reverse causality cannot be ruled out.
- Panel regression evidence on fiscal transparency and corruption:
  - Sample: 102 countries over 6 years — 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2015, and 2017.
  - Dependent variable: Control of Corruption Index (WGI).
  - Main independent variable: Open Budget Index (International Budget Partnership).
  - Additional controls: PPP-adjusted GDP per capita (World Bank WDI), voice and accountability, political stability and absence of violence, rule of law (WGI), ease of doing business (World Bank Doing Business Survey), and a dummy for commodity exporters (IMF WEO definition).
  - Estimation methods: fixed effects and random effects; time-fixed effects included.
  - Main regression findings:
    - Coefficients on Open Budget Index and control variables enter with expected signs and are almost always statistically significant.
    - Control of corruption positively associated with per capita income, voice and accountability, political stability and absence of violence, rule of law, and ease of doing business.
    - Control of corruption negatively associated with being a commodity exporter.
    - Quantitative effect: improving a country’s Open Budget Index by one standard deviation (or 24 units) is associated with an increase in the Control of Corruption Index (standard deviation about 0.86) by about 0.05 (from the most comprehensive regression specifications).
- Consistency with other studies:
  - Similar results reported in Haque and Neanidis (2009), Luna and Montes (2017), and IMF (2019a).

*Prepared by Slavi Slavov and Richard Hughes; draws on joint work with Bernardin Akitoby, Larry Cui, Silvia Domit, Jingzhou Meng, and Nujin Suphaphiphat.*

### 15.      While regressions analysis can mitigate the risk of omitted variables, it leaves the issue of

### 1rusea2019002 - 15. While regressions analysis can mitigate the risk of omitted variables, it leaves the issue of

### Causality and evidence on budget openness and corruption
- Regressions mitigate omitted-variable risk but do not fully resolve causality among corruption, institutions, and economic development.
- Results are consistent with experimental designs and natural experiments reviewed in IMF (2019a), which show that improved budget openness can increase government efficiency and reduce opportunities for corruption, particularly when combined with:
  - a high degree of press freedom, and
  - wide access to digital technologies.

### Comparison of Russia’s 2014 and 2019 Fiscal Transparency Evaluations
- 2014 FTE findings:
  - Russia was an early volunteer for IMF fiscal transparency evaluation and one of the best performing emerging markets in 2014.
  - Fiscal reports provided a relatively complete, timely, and accurate picture of general government finances, placing Russia between the averages for the emerging and advanced European countries that undertook an FTE.
  - Fiscal forecasts and budgets were prepared within a comprehensive legal framework and provided a clear picture of medium-term economic and budgetary developments.
  - Fiscal risks management identified as a relative weakness except for strong procedures for disclosing and controlling risks related to budgetary contingencies, guarantees, and subnational governments; practices only slightly better than the average for emerging Europe.
- 2019 updated evaluation and changes since 2014:
  - Significant progress in improving fiscal transparency over the last 5 years, with the largest improvement in fiscal risk analysis.
  - Fiscal reporting improvements:
    - annual publication of a detailed account of the cost of tax expenditures,
    - adoption of a program classification as the basis for budget appropriations,
    - publication of the first official estimates of the volume and value of sub-soil oil, gas, and mineral reserves.
  - Budget accessibility enhanced by publication of a new Citizen’s Budget and pilots in participatory budgeting in more than half of the regions.
  - Fiscal risk disclosure improved with publication of a comprehensive Fiscal Risks Report and longer-term (to 2036) macroeconomic and fiscal scenarios.
  - These reforms placed Russia’s fiscal risk practices above the average for advanced European countries.

### Remaining gaps and weaknesses in fiscal transparency
- Institutional and reporting gaps:
  - Responsibility for compilation and dissemination of fiscal statistics remains with the Federal Treasury, a semi-autonomous agency of the Ministry of Finance.
  - Over 30,000 SOEs remain outside the scope of consolidated fiscal reporting and many do not publish audited financial statements.
- Fiscal rules and budgetary practice concerns:
  - Fiscal rules have been subject to frequent revisions, undermining credibility as durable anchors for fiscal planning.
  - The proportion of the Federal Budget classified for national security purposes increased from 10 percent in 2010 to 17 percent in 2018.
  - The National Welfare Fund (NWF) has been used previously for extrabudgetary domestic spending (bank recapitalizations, infrastructure spending, subsidized credit for SMEs).
  - Regular budget execution rules were suspended to allow for unlimited carryover and reallocation into the government’s 13 national projects which account for around 10 percent of the federal budget.
- Public-private partnerships:
  - Little progress in tracking the almost 2,500 public private partnership projects, with an estimated value of around 2.2 percent of GDP in 2017.

### Key regression results on the impact of budget openness on Control of Corruption (Table 1 — select coefficients and statistics)
- Dependent variable: Control of corruption.
- Estimation methods: Fixed effects and Random effects across specifications.
- Selected independent variable coefficients (coefficient (standard error) and significance where shown):
  - Constant:
    - -4.285*** (0.661)
    - -4.244*** (0.393)
    - -4.219*** (0.655)
    - -3.981*** (0.361)
    - -4.026*** (0.677)
    - -3.923*** (0.372)
    - -3.908*** (0.663)
    - -2.964*** (0.292)
    - -3.819*** (0.888)
    - -4.098*** (0.413)
    - -4.285*** (0.661)
    - -3.992*** (0.388)
    - -3.147*** (0.901)
    - -2.377*** (0.303)
  - Log per capita GDP (PPP-adjusted):
    - 0.443*** (0.075)
    - 0.436*** (0.044)
    - 0.437*** (0.074)
    - 0.409*** (0.040)
    - 0.416*** (0.076)
    - 0.402*** (0.042)
    - 0.404*** (0.075)
    - 0.298*** (0.033)
    - 0.368*** (0.102)
    - 0.366*** (0.049)
    - 0.443*** (0.075)
    - 0.425*** (0.043)
    - 0.298*** (0.103)
    - 0.191*** (0.037)
  - Open budget index:
    - 0.002*** (0.001)
    - 0.003*** (0.001)
    - 0.002** (0.001)
    - 0.002*** (0.001)
    - 0.002*** (0.001)
    - 0.003*** (0.001)
    - 0.002*** (0.001)
    - 0.003*** (0.001)
    - 0.002** (0.001)
    - 0.003*** (0.001)
    - 0.002*** (0.001)
    - 0.002*** (0.001)
    - 0.002** (0.001)
    - 0.002** (0.001)
  - Other governance variables (examples):
    - Voice and accountability: 0.070*** (0.023); 0.121*** (0.022); 0.060** (0.028); 0.145*** (0.028)
    - Political stability and absence of violence: 0.030* (0.017); 0.061*** (0.018); 0.006 (0.021); 0.048** (0.022)
    - Rule of law: 0.082*** (0.024); 0.266*** (0.025); 0.084*** (0.028); 0.232*** (0.029)
    - Ease of doing business: 0.002 (0.002); 0.007*** (0.002); 0.002 (0.002); 0.008*** (0.002)
    - Commodity exporter: -0.488*** (0.123); -0.219*** (0.076)
- Model statistics (across specifications):
  - Number of observations: 539; 539; 539; 539; 539; 539; 539; 539; 395; 395; 539; 539; 395; 395
  - R-squared: 0.402; 0.415; 0.464; 0.517; 0.430; 0.471; 0.502; 0.703; 0.421; 0.472; 0.402; 0.482; 0.601; 0.789
  - Number of countries: 102 (in each specification)
- Notes:
  - Robust standard errors are reported in parentheses.
  - Significance codes: *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1.
  - Source for table: Authors' estimates.

### Policy recommendations to improve fiscal transparency in Russia
- State-owned enterprises:
  - Produce a summary document on the financial performance of the SOE sector and require all SOEs to publish audited financial statements.
- Statistical independence:
  - Reinforce the institutional independence of Rosstat; assign to Rosstat the responsibility for dissemination of government finance statistics independently of the government.
- Public private partnerships:
  - Publish annual estimates of the government’s total long-term obligations under PPP contracts.
- Forecast credibility:
  - Publish in budget documentation comparisons between government economic and fiscal forecasts and those of independent bodies and explain any material differences.
- Fiscal rules:
  - Adhere to the current fiscal rule to rebuild buffers and promote intergenerational equity in sharing Russia’s finite natural resource wealth with future generations.
- Budgetary integrity:
  - Discontinue extrabudgetary domestic investment by the NWF.
  - Review and reduce the classified portion of public expenditures.
  - Disclose the costs of quasi-fiscal policy mandates for SOEs in an appendix to the budget and in SOE financial statements.
- Supplementary budget:
  - Return to normal in-year virement rules for the 13 national projects.
- Fiscal risks report:
  - Publish an updated Fiscal Risks Report (FRR) every 3 years and require government to respond within 2 years.
- Long-term analysis:
  - Incorporate 50-year macroeconomic and fiscal projections into the FRR to assess intergenerational fairness under various scenarios for oil prices and other macroeconomic parameters.
- Natural resources:
  - Publish annual estimates of the volume and value of Russia’s natural resource reserves under different price and production scenarios.
  - Consider evaluating natural resource management against Pillar IV of the IMF’s Fiscal Transparency Code.

### Box 1 — Best practices in SOE governance (high-level recommendations aligned with OECD guidelines)
- create and maintain a public SOE register;
- move away from a decentralized SOE oversight model which generates conflicts of interest between policy-setting and ownership, and hinders comprehensive monitoring;
- get rid of special accounting rules for SOEs which hinder transparency and comparability;
- publish an ownership policy document which spells out the rationale for public ownership of each SOE, strikes a balance between active engagement and delegation by the state, and clarifies non-commercial mandates, dividend policies, and rules for fiscal support;
- make boards more independent and professional (for example, by centralizing board selection);
- clarify the links between the income statements and balance sheets of SOEs and those of the budget; and
- gradually incorporate local government SOEs into this framework.

*Source: Authors' estimates and content of the provided IMF chapter.*

---


_Source: https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/cr/2019/1rusea2019002.pdf_