Kommersant: "Budget reform to continue"
Next government to reap results.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin recently signed an action plan under the budget reforms for 2011, which prioritise making budget expenditures more effective.
The official seal will be given to the "government's strategic planning" in 2011. A relevant law will link macroeconomic forecasting with its project activities.
Government programmes and contract registries will receive their final official status. Nevertheless, according to the government's recent decisions, the plan will only be carried out in 2013.
The action plan on implementing the government programme to enhance the efficiency of budget expenditures until 2012, which was published on the government's official website yesterday, contains the full package of budget reform measures that the government planned to launch in 2011.
It has been suggested that the draft law on state strategic planning be submitted to the government to replace the 1995 Federal Law No. 115 "On State Forecasting and Socio-economic Development Programmes."
The Economy Ministry prepared a new draft in 2009. Its increased scale and detailed explanation of all aspects of state planning is one more step back to the days of the Soviet Planning Committee. Under the draft, state planning documents include forecasts and concepts of scientific, technical, social and economic development and budget strategy. Strategic planning drafts must be subject to public discussion and must be entered into a uniform information registry.
The draft also suggests formulating a new version of the Budget Code in the fourth quarter of 2011. Government officials told Kommersant that no radical changes are planned and the code will be supplemented with a legal base for making the transition to a formation on the basis of programmes and targets.
This primarily implies the transfer of government investments into state programmes. Under the plan, draft state programmes were supposed to be presented to the government on April 15, but ministries and departments were late.
At a March 10 conference, Putin made a decision to postpone the programmes to 2013. He also decided in April to allow the ministries not to submit to the government reports on the results and main directions of their activities until 2013.
The plan provides for amendments to the procedure for running expenditure commitments registry. It must be linked with the state contract registries and, apparently, their prices.
However, officials of the Finance Ministry and Economy Ministry were not able to explain yesterday which amendments regulating the expenditure commitments registry will be made and in which documents.
Under the plan, the Finance Ministry will study this question by late June. Thus, in theory, restrictions on the growth of prices under present state purchase contracts may appear in 2011, but they will hardly start functioning before 2013.
Pyotr Netreba and Alexander Gudkov
