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INSTITUTE FOR THE ECONOMY IN TRANSITION

RUSSIAN ECONOMY: TRENDS AND PERSPECTIVES

FEBRUARY 2000

MONTHLY BULLETIN

Moscow

2000

© Institute for the Economy in Transition, 1996. Licence, ЛР ¹ 021018 of 09.11.95

5 Gazetny pereulok, Moscow 103918, Russian Federation

Phone: (095) 203-88-16 Fax: (095) 202-42-24 E- Mail: todorov@iet.ru

Economy and politics in February 2000 3

The state of the federal budget 3

Monetary Policy 5

Financial Markets 8

Investment in the real sector 16

Foreign investment 17

Profitability of banking operations by results of the three Quarters 1999 18

The real sector: factors and trends 21

IET Monthly Trend Survey: February 2000 24

To the Concept of Creating Russian State Agricultural Bank 26

Food Aid to Russia 27

Foreign trade 28

Economy and politics in February 2000

The process of configuring of the newly elected Duma that continued through late- February allows several preliminary conclusions.

The configuration of the present Duma is different from the previous. Whereas the period of the radical social transformation, with its uncompromising political struggle is coming to an end, different groups and strata on the society have realized their own economic interests, which determined the retreat from a strict ideological opposition in favor of an organized lobbyism. The pragmatic stand taken by УUnityФ and УPeople’s DeputyФ factions, which has already manifested itself in their accentuated ignorance of ideology and entering in alliances both with the right and leftist forces, may serve as an illustration to the alleviation of intensity of the ideological struggle. At the same time, along with traditional factions that based on political parties, the new Duma shows the genesis of a number of lobbyist groups (agrarians, fuel and energy sector (Energy of Russia), which unquestionably will be very active.

Form the viewpoint of prospects of cooperation between the executive and legislative branches of power, such a positioning in the Duma potentially may entail both positive and negative consequences. On the one hand, the presidential rally increases the susceptibility of the executive power’s positions before lobbyist pressure. On the other hand, however, the pro-government factions in the Duma showed their ability, if necessity arises, to play the role of nucleus for crystalization, thus uniting the number of votes needed to block any undesirable decision. High chances of the acting President to be elected is the factor which counteracts and constrains lobbyists’ prospects ( as well as the prospects of populism). The consequences of the present decisions may remain problems of the today’s power.

In the conditions of a strong federal power, which is supported by the regions and enjoys a high rating among the population, the dependence on lobbyists and, especially, on any success of a populist policy is substantially lower this year compared with the 1996 presidential rally.

Nonetheless, there is a number of factors that do not allow a final ignorance of prospects of successful lobbyism at a scale being substantial for the economy. First, the continuation of economic growth, favorable state of affairs in the international markets help the sectoral lobbyists strengthen their positions. Secondly, one should take into account a high degree of interconnection between the power’s authority and the emergence of the military action in Chechnya and progress in the macroeconomic sphere ( the balanced budget, low inflation rate, the ongoing trend to the continuation of economic growth). Should any threat to the favorable image of the power arise, for example, because of a deterioration of the budget execution indices, it is not at all excluded that the power would opt to attract the national business’s resources to stabilize the situation. At the same time, the problems with paying off the debt arise (in 2000,the debt, indeed, has begun to grow), which may endanger the prospects of the increase of budget employees’ wages by non- inflationary methods. The prospects of tax revenues also can be questioned.

In such a situation, the signing of a series of Decrees on agri-industrial sector ( on establishment of Rosselkhozbank; on restructuring the tax indebtedness, penalties and fines; on urgent measures on holding the sowing and harvesting campaign), the situation around the aluminum deal; the non-interference policy that the government demonstrated in the notorious cases of the solution of problems of re-assignment of ownership rights by force may serve as an indicator of the potential readiness of the executive power to collaborate with groups of interest. However, it would be possible to evaluate the power’s ability to pursue a sound economic policy and follow the interests of the society as a whole only when an actual legislative process in the Parliament starts.

T. Drobyshevskaya

The state of the federal budget

Table 1.

	XII	I	II	III	IV	V	VI	VII	VIII	IX	X	XI	XII
Revenue
Profit tax	2592	1061	986	2090	3264	2967	3007	2807	3937	3090	2693	5078	4647
VAT, special tax and excises		3	3	4	268	866	1104	1087	1056	913	890	1000	1394
Taxes on foreign trade and foreign economic activities	14811	9849	7998	9729	11375	8679	9957	11857	10345	11349	12729	12746	19737
Other taxes, levies and payments	3714	1631	2461	3036	3001	2604	4390	4625	2825	1164	3652	4418	4467
Overall taxes and payments	298	174	510	344	514	310	623	522	411	661	916	639	856
Total taxes and revenues	21416	12718	11959	15203	18423	15426	19081	20897	18574	17177	20881	23881	31101
Non-tax revenues	11736	1645	65	2753	2621	2394	5200	3458	1377	8082	3656	4929	8269
Total revenues	33152	14362	13383	16634	21044	18256	23854	24354	22623	22629	24534	28810	39370
Expenditure
State administration	1388	131	503	572	627	324	491	448	454	431	526	487	1526
National defense	5566	1562	2135	4343	3907	3606	3682	3776	3736	5619	5420	4008	9182
International activity		530	1050	866	1496	1230	7057	1870	1911	1792	1431	687	5574
Justice	557	17	126	119	219	115	158	195	125	147	172	169	608
Law enforcement activity	3408	302	1674	1645	2265	1772 Pages:     | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |   ...   | 9 |    Книги по разным темам