Budget Trends

In 2013, it became clear that the Far East is a kind of protected article of the federal budget: if transfers across the country fell by more than 6%, for the Far East they increased by 28,8%. Nevertheless, in the situation in 2013, the Far East was “helped” by misfortune: the center was forced to subsidize overcoming the consequences of a catastrophic flood, and therefore the sharpest growth in transfers was noted in the Amur Region, the Jewish Autonomous Region and the Khabarovsk Territory. Therefore, one should not say that the federal center, even in the worst national situation, will increase funding for the Far East. This will be clear at the end of 2014-15.

A clear change in the trend occurred on Sakhalin, which is an example of the most successful region of the Far East in terms of increasing its own revenue base in the process of implementing fuel and energy projects. Therefore, the federal center consistently reduced its funding to 2011, inclusive (when there was the sharpest decline - by 40%), but then began to gradually increase the volume of transfers, which is partly due to the implementation of the Kuril FTP.

Table. 4. Gratuitous receipts to regional budgets (billion rubles / index to the previous year)

As is already clear, the regions of the Far East are highly subsidized, and some of them are among the most subsidized subjects of the federation (Table 5, data on consolidated budgets, ie taking into account local government). In particular, the federal authorities actively subsidize the remote northern regions, where Russia has the highest costs of economic activity. For this reason, most federal money, as already mentioned, is received not only in the Far East, but throughout the country, Yakutia, and depending on federal transfers, Kamchatka and the Magadan Oblast are among the Russian leaders.

On the contrary, in essence, the only example of a region that has practically overcome the subsidy dependency is Sakhalin in the Far East. For example, in 2008-10. the share of transfers in its budget still exceeded 20%, after which it plummeted, making up 2012-13. less than 10%. In the first half of 2014, it is clear that the center practically ceased financing Sakhalin, since the share of non-repayable payments amounted to record low 2,1%. At the same time, such financial “freedom” should not at all please the Sakhalin residents. Recall that the Federal Target Program for the socio-economic development of the Kuril Islands is implemented in the region, which, although significantly inferior in terms of financing the “main” Far Eastern Federal Target Program, is of great importance for remote island territories.

Table. 5. Share of gratuitous receipts in revenues of consolidated regional budgets (%).