A pensioner holds household services receipts and some coins.
Photo: Ivan Makeev
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Govt Calculates Pension Fund Surplus
The Pension Fund’s budget has been shaped with the surplus for 2007 and 2008, while the money shortage is forecasted to begin only in 2009. But even then, the gap will be covered by the own funds of the Pension Fund, asserts the perspective financial target of the government elaborated for 2007 to 2009. The analysts, however, are not so optimistic, forecasting the budgetary gap of $3.3 billion for the Pension Fund already in 2007 and expecting the amount to increase further on.
The Pension Fund of Russia will have the budget surplus of 7.13 billion rubles in 2007 and of 7.46 billion rubles in 2008, according to financial target, which approval the government’s news service reported yesterday. In 2009, however, the surplus will give way to a moderate gap of 66 billion rubles to be covered by the excess money of the Pension Fund posted as of early 2009.
Of interest is that under the 2007 Act on the Pension Fund of Russia, which has taken effect by the way, the Fund will have the gap of 88 billion rubles ($3.3 billion) already this year. The Act also sets forth a source to cover the deficit - appropriations from the federal budget, of course.
But the sudden replacement of the budget gap by the budget surplus seems strange only at the beginning. Russia’s Finance Ministry that shaped the financial target added all federal budget appropriations due to the Pension Fund to the revenues of the latter. Own revenues of the Pension Fund are estimated at 765 billion rubles in 2007, but the amount goes up to 1.725 billion rubles with all budget transfers taken into account. The government compares exactly this amount to the spending (1.718 billion rubles) to arrive at the surplus of 7 billion rubles for the Pension Fund.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Jan. 23, 2007
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