October 25, 2012. The regional budget deficit will be gradually going down in the future, Sverdlovsk Region’s Finance Minister Galina Kulichenko said at a press meeting recently.

The Minister stressed that, while this year’s budget deficit comes to 16.9bn RUR, it is only expected to come to 9.4bn RUR in 2015.

When asked about the draft law on the regional budget for 2013 and the plans for 2014 and 2015, Kulachenko said that the regional finance analysts prefer to sustain the increase in Sverdlovsk Region’s public debt and suggest that it should be reduced by 2.2bn RUR as soon as 2013.

As for the main inter-budgetary relations trends, the Finance Minister observed that subsidies to local municipalities that were meant to help them even out their budget insufficiencies rose by 2.1bn RUR in 2012. What is more, the local towns can now also have its government loan debts restructured (these loans were provided from the region’s budget this year). This will serve as a sort of insurance for the town in case the regional and the local budgets’ revenues go down.