Putin Walks Fiscal Tightrope as Era of Deficits Seen to 2020
- Budget won't be balanced until 2020 or later, survey shows
- Economy Ministry forecasts oil at average of $40 through 2019
Moscow, Russia.
Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
If the Russian government’s in-house forecaster is right that muted oil prices are here to stay, budget deficits will stretch to the end of this decade, according to a Bloomberg survey of analysts.
Under the Economy Ministry’s projection that oil will average $40 a barrel through 2019, the books won’t balance until 2020 or later, according to 23 of 28 analysts in the poll. Four of them expect revenue to match spending only after 2025. Authorities are seeking fiscal savings of one percentage point of gross domestic product each year to balance the budget by 2019, which a plurality of economists identified as the government’s best hope for boosting growth.