Kudrin sees risks of state cos failing to pay 70% divs to budget

MOSCOW, Oct 8 (PRIME) – The Russian budget may have an up to 70% shortfall in revenue from dividends paid by state firms in 2019-2021, according to a draft document, the Audit Chamber’s head Alexei Kudrin told reporters on Monday.

“The budget again encompasses a very large sum of revenue from dividends, it amounts to more than 500 billion rubles. But we think that we may fail to receive up to 70% of the sum taking into account the previous budget cycles,” he said.

He added that the government may receive 300 billion rubles less than planned in 2019 and 400 billion rubles less in 2020 and in 2021.

“This is why we aim at the government getting the figures presented in the budget. We don’t want this to repeat the previous years when (the government) repeatedly rejected the forecast on dividends during the year and reduced norms of dividends for state companies and corporations,” he said.

The Finance Ministry expects state companies to pay 588.3 billion rubles of dividends for the budget in 2019, 626.1 billion rubles in 2020, and 675.2 billion rubles in 2021.

(66.6270 rubles – U.S. $1)

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