Bashkortostan may return to number of donor regions: experts

UFA, 12 April 2017. /Bashinform News Agency, Alim Faizov/. Bashkortostan, Perm, Omsk and Tomsk regions may return to the list of "donor regions", RBC-Ufa reports with reference to the Vedomosti newspaper. This will happen if the list is abandoned by Nenets Autonomous District, Samara and Sverdlovsk regions, called "candidates for elimination". This is stated in the report of experts of the Leontief Centre presented at the conference of the Higher School of Economics.

The report says that since 2006 the number of donor regions in Russia has decreased from 25 to 14: in this category there are regions that are able to provide financing of public services above the established minimum and do not need subsidies for equalizing the budget provision. These 14 regions are accounted for more than 60 percent of Russia's revenues, two-thirds of these revenues are provided by four "core donors": Moscow and three "oil" regions (Khanty-Mansi Autonomous District, Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District and Tyumen Region). At the same time, the share of their participation is reduced due to the redistribution of taxes in favour of the federal budget. Three "candidates for the elimination" are mentioned in the report as unstable regions, in which revenues to budgets of all levels are declining. In Bashkortostan and three other constituent entities of the Russian Federation, considered as their replacement, revenues to the budget system are growing.

Experts say in the report on the complexity and ambiguity of the practice of redistributing revenues to the budget in the Russian regions. For example, some regions have been able to compensate for the withdrawal of revenues to the federal budget through an increase in transfers, namely Tatarstan, Chelyabinsk and Orenburg Regions. Some donor regions continue to receive federal subsidies, while others, not being donors, on the contrary, receive only a statutory minimum.