Vladimir Putin answered question of Ufa journalist regarding funds received from federal budget

UFA, 15 December 2017. /Bashinform News Agency, Natalia Ovcharuk/. The representative of the Ufa newspaper " Obshchestvennaya Elektronnaya Gazeta " Stanislav Shakhov managed to ask the head of state Vladimir Putin a question at the 13th annual press conference.

“Getting federal funds is a headache for any region. For example, when Bashkiria collects 100 billion rubles of revenues, transfers 50 billion rubles to the federal budget, and after that, it has to send numerous delegations to Moscow to get 30 billion rubles back as subsidies. Do you believe a tax reform is necessary to make it possible for the regions to keep a larger portion of the funds they collect? For example, 5% of the collected minerals extraction tax which existed until 2010 but then it was cancelled. This would enable regions to better manage their funds, including launching road renovation on time, and not in December, and the federal money finally arrives and has to be used”.

Vladimir Putin, Russian President:

«We are discussing these solutions. We raised this issue as recently as last week. We discussed road construction and revenues generated by regions.

Incidentally, you may know that we resolved to restructure regional debt.

We think that, as you rightly noted, people, wherever they live in Russia, should have a similar quality of live. For an obvious reason, it is very difficult to achieve. We know that regions just developed differently for various reasons. But it is not the people’s fault that they live in regions that are not self-sufficient. And so what have we been doing for years? Levelling out their budget revenues with the revenues of the regions, in which the country has invested huge resources over decades and maybe even a hundred years. These investment and resources may have also come from the regions which are today qualified as not self-sufficient. Therefore, it is fair to re-distribute the resources from the 12 donor regions to the others. And we will be doing it carefully, without undermining the donor regions’ willingness to develop their economy further”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s47-1QUjlas