Russia hides one-third of its budget expenditures

Russia is keeping an unprecedented one-third of its budget spending out of the public eye, a stark measure of how a year of war against Ukraine has redrawn government finances and economic priorities, reported from Bloomberg.

Classified or unspecified expenditure through March 24 has surged to 2.4 trillion rubles ($31 billion), Finance Ministry data show, more than double the level in the same period a year ago, according to Bloomberg Economics’s estimates. Plans set out for 2023 envisaged the budget’s secret share at almost a quarter, Bloomberg calculations show.

As spending on Russia’s military increases sharply, defence — together with the related category of national security — is now second only to the government’s social programmes as a proportion of spending.

At 2.58 trillion roubles, the shortfall just in the first two months approached its planned level for the year as a whole, which the Finance Ministry expected at 2.93 trillion roubles. Bloomberg Economics predicts the federal budget will run a deficit of 3%-4% of the gross domestic product this year.

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