The head of the Ministry of Economic Development Reshetnikov spoke about the adoption of “a bunch of inefficient decisions” in the economy
The head of the Ministry of Economic Development, Maxim Reshetnikov, said that there are many simplifications in discussions about a possible increase in taxes in Russia, its participants do not pay attention to other, sometimes more significant issues, so the quality of discussions needs to be changed. He said this during a conversation at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF-2023), reports Interfax.
The minister stressed that talks only in the format of raising taxes or not lead to many problems in management. “We made a lot of inefficient decisions. We have the volume of cross-subsidization in various industries in the tens and hundreds of billions of rubles,” the minister said.
According to Reshetnikov, one can endlessly plan large investment programs under the slogans that one or another project is needed at any cost. However, it turns out that if you look at each specific proposal, then the payback period for it is 40-50 years, or even payback cannot be seen at all.
As an example, he cited investments under forecasts of growth in energy consumption made ten years ago. The result was the debts of companies that do not know when they will return. There are ongoing discussions about significant investments in rail infrastructure. “We have a gigantic dispute now, what are we building it for and who will return it later,” the head of the Ministry of Economic Development explained.
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At the same time, he opposed the uncontrolled increase in taxes for non-obvious purposes, since taking more from a business than it can give means stopping the economy. Reshetnikov said discussing increasing company fees is the easiest thing anyone could think of, though there are plenty of other issues to talk about.
At the same time, the minister believes that difficult decisions on the budget are inevitable, although in recent years the government has shied away from talking about such topics. He named two possible options for cutting costs – either hard cut some budget items, or carry out frontal cuts followed by targeted compensation. In addition, Reshetnikov considers a change in the budget rule inevitable, since “we will not go further in the parameters that we agreed on a year and a half ago.”
The day before, the head of the Ministry of Finance, Anton Siluanov, said that the government wants to cut expenditure items, “which have not been reviewed for ten years.” “They sit in our head, that it is unshakable. There is nothing unshakable, ”he explained, without specifying what kind of expenses he had in mind.
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