Russia has nowhere to get money to cover budget deficit – economist Pendzyn

He spoke about this on Espreso TV.

"For 2023, Russia has drawn a desired annual budget deficit of three trillion Russian rubles. In the first quarter of this year, they had a deficit of 2.4 trillion rubles, and in four months the deficit was 3.4 trillion, which means that in four months the Russian Federation exceeded the desired annual deficit by 400 billion rubles. In fact, in the first quarter, they slowed down spending and did not finance quite a few of them, so in April they were forced to finance the debts that arose from underfunding. As a result, the deficit increased by 1 trillion rubles," the economist explained.

Oleh Pendzyn said that today the Russian Federation is developing several ways to refinance the budget, which will continue to grow.

"The first way is that Russia is actively discussing the idea of issuing domestic government bonds, which will be used to pay a mandatory portion of people's salaries. The second way is that Russia has turned to the so-called friendly countries for the possibility of borrowing to refinance its own debt. I would like to remind you that one of the first packages of sanctions imposed on Russia banned refinancing of Russian debt in both Europe and the United States, meaning that Russia's debt cannot be redeemed or transacted with. Accordingly, the Russians found themselves in a situation where they have nowhere to borrow money to cover the budget deficit," Penzin said.

• On May 11, the BBC reported that Russia's oil and gas revenues fell by 52%, and the budget deficit has already exceeded the planned annual figure.