Despite the huge costs of the war in Ukraine, in 2023 Russia’s budget deficit amounted to 1.9% of the gross domestic product, which is significantly less than in Romania.

Some preliminary estimates released Thursday by the Finance Ministry in Moscow put the overall deficit at 3,240 billion rubles ($36.5 billion), with revenues up 4.7 percent annually to 29,120 billion rubles and spending up 4 percent. to 32.360 billion rubles, Reuters and Agerpres report.

A 25% rise in non-oil and gas revenues offset a 23.9% drop in energy revenues as Western sanctions, including an embargo on Russian oil prices, demanded necessary funds from Moscow to continue its war in Ukraine.

After the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia is directing more and more resources to military spending and the defense industry. The spending, along with defense and security, is expected to make up about 40% of total budget spending this year.

Big spending at the start of 2023 led many analysts to predict that Russia would run a huge budget deficit, but high oil prices and Russia’s success in circumventing Western attempts to cut its energy revenues allowed Moscow to finish 2023 with a smaller deficit.

What will be Romania’s budget deficit in 2023

As for Romania, data published at the end of December in the Budget Implementation Report showed that the budget deficit rose to 4.64% of GDP in the first 11 months of 2023, 0.45 percentage points higher than in the same period in 2022. year .

But earlier this week, Finance Minister Marcel Bolosh said the budget deficit would be below 5.7%, lower than the government expected. His comments came as official figures for the full year 2023 have yet to be released.

“The estimated budget deficit was 5.9%. Calculations show us that we are much better, below 5.7%, so to speak,” he said, quoted by Agerpres.

“At the next press conference, I will also present data from the budget execution account, because we are coming to the end of the regularization that we have to do, so that I do not give you numbers that will haunt you later,” Bolosh said at a press conference in Monday.