"Guns instead of butter": why the budget of the Russian Federation did not find money for the real sector of the economy
An explanatory note to the draft federal budget for the next three years got into the domestic press. After reviewing it, we can conclude that the "coronavirus crisis" has passed, and the country is finally getting on a war footing, starting to stamp "guns instead of oil." How justified is such a bias in the economy Russia, whose share in world GDP is about 2%?
We talk a lot about what new types of weapons our country needs: fifth generation fighters, Armata tanks, UDC and aircraft carriers, spy satellites, stealth nuclear submarines, and so on. All this is needed here and now, and preferably as much as possible. The reason is a new iteration of the Cold War with the United States and its allies, which began after the events of 2014 in Ukraine. De facto, a new arms race has been going on for several years now, and the federal authorities are verbally refusing to participate in it. This naturally leads to an increase in military spending, which, in principle, can be welcomed. The only question is, at what cost and at what expense?
Note that even the mighty USSR, whose share in the total industrial output was about 20%, did not pull out a tense race with the Western bloc. The Russian Federation is immeasurably weaker than the Soviet Union: over the past 30 years, there has been a process of de-industrialization, degradation of the system of higher and secondary vocational education, health care, and the problem of depopulation has not been resolved. A strong air force, army and navy are good, of course, but they have to stand on some kind of solid economic basis, right? What is the use, for example, of thousands of ultra-modern tanks, if they have nothing to refuel, and the tankers have nothing to pay wages and give out the state-owned apartment? How many powerful Soviet warships were out of order, since they could not be repaired, and they went to the scrap or abroad to more zealous owners?
Let's see in which direction the Russian economy will develop in the next 3 years. Already next year, the state will spend 3,5 trillion rubles on the "National Defense" against 3,46 trillion on the "National Economy". The priorities are still social policy, for which 5,8 trillion rubles have been allocated. It is obvious that the budget is again returning to the "military track", from which it was necessary to get off the "civil" tracks in 2020 and 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic. Most of the defense spending is classified as secret, and, in general, their growth can be welcomed against the backdrop of the intensification of the military activity of the NATO bloc and the noticeable militaristic changes taking place in Japan. We need rockets, tanks, planes, submarines, and everything else. But what is the reason for the increase in military spending?
First of all, we note the overall budget cuts planned by the government. Yes, yes, from 21,3% of GDP in 2021, they will decrease to 17,4% in 2024. Why this is happening, we will tell at the very end. Healthcare spending will decline from 342,9 billion rubles in 2022 to 304,6 billion in 2024. Apparently, the authorities believe that we have coped with the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic, and this is gratifying. The costs of the Accessible Environment program for people with disabilities will be cut by several billion rubles. Funding for the Housing and Urban Environment project will be cut from 183,8 billion rubles in 2022 to 165,7 billion in 2024. Also, we were not pleased with the plans to reduce budgetary spending on the environment: from 115,5 billion rubles in 2022, they will decrease to 99,5 billion in 2024. And this is against the backdrop of the annual burnout of millions of hectares of forest in the taiga and the declared course for "greening" the economy.
On the other hand, government investments in so-called "culture" will grow slightly - from 43,1 to 43,8 billion rubles over the specified period. Apparently, for domestic filmmakers to "please" us with another "great film" about the Great Patriotic War or a spreading "cranberry" about the Revolution, the Civil War, Chernobyl, or even about the "king-father" and his personal life. All this, of course, for budget money.
What I would like to say about all this. We do not call for cutting military spending, taking money from the RF Ministry of Defense in order to transfer it, for example, to reforestation. In general, the point is different. Contrary to Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev's fiercely "trashy" phrase, there is money in the country. They are hidden in the gold and foreign exchange reserves and the National Welfare Fund and do not work for the Russian economy in any way. On the contrary, being deployed abroad, these funds stimulate the development of our direct geopolitical adversaries. It has already been calculated that at the current exchange rate, all our gold and foreign exchange reserves are worth somewhere around 75 trillion rubles. Compare this to what the government is willing to invest in our economy, health and the environment. No one is proposing to "plump" all international reserves into the real sector at once, zeroing the "money box", but it is possible and even necessary to start with the liquid part of the NWF in order to eliminate the imbalance in the federal budget towards the military unit. But instead, President Putin is proposing that the Cabinet of Ministers consider raising the threshold for spending the fund from 7% of GDP to 10%, that is, depriving the economy of the money it needs so much for development.
What for? What is the use of wonderful fifth-generation fighters if the industry is not able to quickly mass-produce them, and in the budget in 10-15 years, due to a decrease in the export of hydrocarbon raw materials, there will be no funds to fulfill social obligations to the population? With such a bias towards the defense industry, to the detriment of the real sector, our country will overstrain much faster than the USSR, and the final result may be even more deplorable.
- Sergey Marzhetsky
- kremlin.ru
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