The government had a budget surplus of 2.4 percent of gross domestic product at the end of January, the Finance Ministry said Tuesday, a jump in revenues driven largely by income from last year's investments of the sovereign wealth funds.
The Finance Ministry said budget income stood at 737.6 billion rubles ($24.3 billion) in January, while expenses were 671.4 billion rubles, leaving a surplus of 66.1 billion rubles.
But January is a special month for both expenditures and revenues for the budget. Expenditures are typically smaller than in any other month as no one works for one-third of the month. Interest from the previous year's investment of the Reserve Fund and National Welfare Fund at the Central Bank contributes to the income — a total of 100 billion rubles for the year.
"The surplus is artificial," said Alexandra Suslina, from the Economic Expert Group. "Without income from the wealth funds, it would disappear."
Income excluding that coming from oil and gas production stood at 443 billion rubles, about 25 percent less than in January 2009. Income from oil and gas production increased about 60 percent year on year, rising to 294.5 billion rubles, as the price of oil increased and export tariffs nearly doubled to $267 per metric ton from $119 in January 2009.
Last year started with an optimistic precrisis budget, which was reconsidered and revised only at the end of April, Suslina said. Therefore in the first few months of last year, while the plan was unclear, expenditures reached dangerous levels. Besides, January is always a low-expense month, Suslina added. In January the budget spent about 6.8 percent of its planned expenditures for the year, while collecting about 9 percent of the revenues planned for the year.
If the average oil price stays at about $70 per barrel and the economy grows at 5 percent, then the budget deficit will be almost 1.2 trillion rubles, said Yevgeny Gavrilenkov and Anton Struchenevsky, analysts at Troika Dialog.
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