The Ministry of Finance could spend almost 1 trillion rubles on buying foreign currency in 2023, which would lead to a fall in the ruble. Vedomosti writes about this with reference to the document "The main directions of the budget, tax and customs tariff policy." The authenticity of the document was confirmed to the publication by a source close to the government.
In 2023, the agency expects to receive about 939 billion additional oil and gas revenues, and it is these funds that are planned to be spent on buying foreign currency. At the same time, currency maneuvers will not be carried out within the framework of a full-fledged budget rule, the sources of the publication indicate, the money will be spent in a hybrid scheme, situationally. According to the source, the new amendments to the budget legislation provide for the resumption of foreign exchange interventions in the transition period (that is, until 2025), while the source of the publication does not believe in the full use of excess profits for the purchase of foreign currency.
The architecture of the budget rule in the new edition will change its main parameter – the bar, after which additional oil and gas revenues will be directed to reserves and can be used to buy foreign currency. If earlier the Ministry of Finance set a specific cut-off price, now it is supposed to abandon it in favor of a clear amount of income received: everything that will be received in excess of 8 trillion rubles can be used to buy foreign currency.
In the summer, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Economic Development and the Bank of Russia discussed the possible resumption of the work of the budget rule in order to reduce the losses of the Russian economy due to the overvalued ruble. At that time, the parties discussed the cut-off price of $60 per barrel and a minimum production of 9.5 million barrels per day, but now it is customary to refuse direct linkage to the cost of oil and production levels.
Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said earlier that a full return to the budget rule is planned only in 2025. This statement was fundamentally different from the summer rhetoric of the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank, when both departments insisted on conducting foreign exchange interventions through the currencies of "friendly countries" – primarily through the Chinese yuan. At the same time, the department estimated that a fall in the dollar by 1 ruble would lead to a budget loss of about 130–200 billion rubles in revenue. The optimal rate for the Russian budget in the government was called 70 rubles per dollar.
