Russian Federation: Fiscal Transparency Evaluation Update

IMF Staff Country Reports, October 30, 2019

Source details

This Technical Assistance paper on the Russian Federation provides a summary of the changes to Russia’s fiscal transparency practices since 2014 and makes recommendations for further improvements.
Publication date: October 30, 2019.
Series: Country Report No. 2019/329, Issue 329, Volume 2019, Pages: 28.

Russia has made important progress in enhancing the coverage and detail of fiscal reporting since 2014.
Assurances of the quality and integrity of fiscal reporting remain incomplete.
Reforms to the statistical treatment of taxes and nonfinancial assets have improved the comparability of budgets, statistics, and accounts.
Transparent reconciliations between the budget, statistics, and accounts are still not provided.
Separate detailed reconciliations of changes to revenue and expenditure are included in the documentation accompanying the annual budget.

It is imperative to make Rosstat fully independent of government.
Rosstat should produce and publish metadata explaining in an accessible way how the main fiscal indicators or datasets are compiled.

The ministry of finance has initiated an annual assessment of the quality of loans.
The ministry of finance will begin writing-down the value of doubtful debts from 2020.

Subject: Budget planning and preparation, Fiscal reporting, Fiscal risks, Macroeconomic and fiscal forecasts, Oil prices, Prices, Public financial management (PFM).
Keywords: balance sheet, Budget planning and preparation, CR, Duma, exchange rate, Federal budget expenditure, Fiscal reporting, Fiscal risks, Global, government, government account, government employee, ISCR, Macroeconomic and fiscal forecasts, MoF Directive, natural resource, Oil prices, Russia, sovereign wealth fund, state program.