I'm certainly not that informed about the oil market, but there have been voices that Russia increasingly needs a higher oil price to sustain it's budget as the public expenditures are quite rapidly growing. We had some articles in this thread about this dilemma.
Sales Tax May Counter Soaring Deficit in Regions is a month-old article of the Moscow Times.
It is sometiems important to state the evident, and indeed in an economy not only the federal debt (and who financed it) matters. While the state debt might seem healthy the regions and other public entities can carry a surprising high debt burden, just as the companies and households. This was (maybe minus the companies IIRC) actually the case in Spain. We had the discussion in the thread about the European economy.The ministry estimates that the regions' total budget deficit will reach 857 billion rubles ($25 billion) in 2014 — 33.5 percent higher than in 2013, Prime reported Sunday, citing data from ITAR-Tass.
Nonetheless, the ministry intends to cut that deficit nearly in half by 2017, bringing it down by 26 percent in 2015, 8 percent in 2016 and another 21 percent in 2017 to end at just 455 billion rubles ($13 billion).
In order to accomplish this rapid reversal, the ministry has proposed an unexpected maneuver: allowing the Russian regions to introduce a sales tax.
There is no doubt that Russia overall little public debt, but there are, as mentioned before big problems ahead for it's economy.
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