Current Stated Budget of Russian Federation Doesn't Match Prior Years
Economic Maskirovka Strikes Again
This pre-war budget of nearly 50 trillion Rubles (https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/fiscal-expenditure)(https://roskazna.gov.ru):
Doesn't match this 31.1 trillion stated budget (https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2023/02/09/budget-off-to-the-front-en).
How likely is it that in a scenario of Total War, the Russian government is going to go Grover Norquist :
“I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”
(https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Grover_Norquist) and half its spending?
Looks like the pre-war rate of change was 10% increases a year, so 2022 was probably really 54 trillion Rubles, and 2023 will be close to 60 trillion Rubles.
It seems like the Russian government has a habit of reporting half the number when it comes to a favorable statistic.
This budget expenditure of 60 trillion Rubles is even greater than the estimate I gave in my article projecting 25 trillion in Russian military spending for 2023.
With 25 trillion Rubles in Military spending, that puts the rest of the budget at 35 trillion Rubles which is very close to peacetime spending rates.
What is baffling is why would 'Economists' accept this figure, without auditing prior years.
In the Novaya Gazeta article, we get a whiff of how Russian Maskirovka works in Russian Media:
“The total budget revenues have fallen by 35% compared to last January, …
“The non-oil and gas revenues also fell: by 28%. The decrease in other revenues was due to the introduction of an accelerated tax reimbursement process in April of the previous year.
“Another possible explanation was provided by two federal officials who wished to remain anonymous to Faridaily, a blog by Russian journalist Farida Rustamova. According to them, an additional factor for the decrease in revenues was that some companies had paid more taxes than they were due in previous periods. This happened due to Russia’s Federal Tax Service switching to a united accounting system for payments.”
By citing a statistically irrelevant truth, we are misdirected away from looking at prior budget years. Why else would these officials be 'anonymous.' Sounds like an insider. Let's trust that guy over the public information we have from years earlier.