Sergei Stepashin: Union State budget is executed better than it was several years ago

Members of the joint board of Belarusian and Russian financial control authorities noted a positive trend in the Union State budget execution.

Members of the joint board of Belarusian and Russian financial control authorities noted a positive trend in the Union State budget execution.

“Today we can see that the Union State budget is implemented a lot better than it was some years ago. We see that financial discipline is being properly maintained,” said head of the Russian Accounts Chamber Sergei Stepashin after the meeting of the joint board of the Belarusian State Control Committee and Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation held in Minsk on February 14^th. In his turn, chairman of the State Control Committee of Belarus Alexandr Yakobson also pointed out some positive tendencies towards the effective execution of the Union State budget: “Whereas in 2007 the revenue plan was implemented 98%, starting from 2008 revenue plans have been regularly overfulfilled”.

A.Yakobson stated that Belarus and Russia fully meet their obligations with respect to gratuitous transfer of contributions to the budget. In his opinion, proper execution of the budget provides a sound basis for successful implementation of the scheduled joint programmes and activities. At the same time, A.Yakobson noted that despite the positive trends in the union budget revenue, there are still some problems concerning its execution.

In particular, what’s at issue is poor budget planning, as the bulk of the annual budget allocations are drawn by government customers of union programmes only in November and December (51.6%). Almost in all sections of the Union State budget functional classification (with the exception of the section “Agriculture and Fishing”) the expenditures have not been utilized in full.

There are also some problems with the implementation of joint programmes. In 2011 Belarusian and Russian enterprises and organizations involved in four programmes committed a number of serious implementation breaches and misused budgetary funds. A report on the audit of the Union State budget expenditures allocated for the implementation of joint programmes was considered during the board meeting. Besides that, government customers of these programmes didn’t establish the control over the effective use of the Union State budget, implementation of programme activities and achievement of performance targets.