News FlashFundingLast updated: 6 September 2024

Russia's Federal Budget Deficit Narrows to 331 Billion Rubles in January-August 2024 as August Posts a 767 Billion Ruble Surplus

Russia's federal budget ran a deficit of 331 billion rubles over January–August 2024, according to the preliminary estimate of the country's Ministry of Finance published on September 6, 2024. Revenues for the eight months reached 23.029 trillion rubles against spending of 23.360 trillion rubles, which puts the deficit at 0.2% of gross domestic product. The cumulative gap narrowed sharply over the summer: January–July had closed with a deficit of 1.098 trillion rubles, while August alone produced a preliminary surplus of 767 billion rubles.

Preliminary estimate: 331 billion rubles over eight months

MOSCOW, September 6, 2024 — The Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation has released its preliminary assessment of federal budget execution for January–August 2024. The reading was reported the same day by Interfax on September 6, 2024. The set of published parameters is compact: a single deficit figure for the eight months, the two aggregate lines behind it, the ratio to gross domestic product, and the monthly split that explains the change since the previous reporting cut.

The headline parameters of the preliminary estimate are as follows:

• deficit of the federal budget for January–August 2024 — 331 billion rubles, or 0.2% of GDP;
• revenues for the period — 23.029 trillion rubles;
• spending for the period — 23.360 trillion rubles;
• deficit for January–July 2024 — 1.098 trillion rubles;
• August 2024 — a preliminary surplus of 767 billion rubles.

Taken together, the five lines describe a budget that entered the second half of the year with a gap of about a trillion rubles and left August with a gap of roughly a third of a trillion. The ministry labels the assessment preliminary, so the figures stand as the current official reading of the eight-month execution rather than a final annual account.

August surplus reverses the seven-month trend

The movement between the two cumulative cuts is the most striking part of the release. Over January–July 2024 the federal budget ran a deficit of 1.098 trillion rubles; once the August result is included, the eight-month deficit stands at 331 billion rubles. The difference between the two published numbers is the monthly surplus of 767 billion rubles, which offset about seven tenths of the gap accumulated over the first seven months of the year.

Expressed as a ratio, the eight-month deficit amounts to roughly 30% of the seven-month deficit. This is an arithmetic reading of the two cumulative figures published by the ministry, not a separate estimate of its own, but it shows the scale of the August swing: a single month moved the cumulative balance by three quarters of a trillion rubles.

What the monthly swing implies

Averaged over the eight months, revenues of 23.029 trillion rubles correspond to about 2.88 trillion rubles a month, and spending of 23.360 trillion rubles to about 2.92 trillion rubles a month. Against those averages, a monthly surplus of 767 billion rubles means that in August revenues exceeded spending by that margin, in contrast to the average monthly gap of the preceding period. The preliminary release does not break the August result into its revenue and spending components, so the surplus is reported here exactly as the ministry states it — as the monthly balance.

Against the full-year budget law: 0.2% versus 1.1% of GDP

The budget law for 2024 provides for a deficit of 2.12 trillion rubles, or 1.1% of GDP. Measured against that authorization, the preliminary eight-month deficit of 331 billion rubles, equal to 0.2% of GDP, uses only a small part of the statutory gap: about 15.6% of the annual ceiling, which on a purely arithmetic reading leaves roughly 1.789 trillion rubles of headroom for the September–December period. Whether the remaining months use that headroom depends on execution, not on the law.

The comparison of the two GDP readings frames the same distance in relative terms:

1. statutory deficit for 2024 — 2.12 trillion rubles, or 1.1% of GDP;
2. preliminary deficit for January–August 2024 — 331 billion rubles, or 0.2% of GDP;
3. difference between the two readings — 0.9 percentage points of GDP.

The same parameters were covered by the Prime news agency on September 6, 2024, which reported the ministry's preliminary figures for the eight months alongside the statutory deficit of the current budget year.

What the preliminary status means

The ministry presents the eight-month assessment as preliminary, and the published set — the deficit, the revenue and spending lines, the GDP ratio and the split between the seven- and eight-month cuts — is the official reading available for January–August 2024 at the time of the release. Later reporting cuts and the final annual account may revise individual lines; the arithmetic relationships above hold for the numbers as published on September 6, 2024.

For the funding desk the release matters as a benchmark: it fixes the size of the federal gap after eight months of 2024, shows how much of the statutory deficit remained unused at that point, and records the August surplus that reshaped the cumulative balance within a single reporting month.