Ministry: Subsidy to 4 largest state firms equals 0.4% of 2016 GDP

MOSCOW, Jul 11 (PRIME) -- The combined budget subsidy provided to oil major Rosneft, gas giant Gazprom, and state banks Sberbank and VTB Bank in 2016 amounted to 350 billion rubles and accounted for 0.4% of the gross domestic product (GDP) for the year, as seen by PRIME on Tuesday in materials of the Finance Ministry.

The average figure for the five previous years amounted to 300 billion rubles.

“In the economic sense, the artificially low level of required return on state assets is in fact a subsidy, or a non-tax spending of the budget,” the ministry said.

In April 2017, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev ordered state companies to pay at least 50% of their net profit for 2016 calculated under International Financial Reporting Standards in dividends for the year. But in May President Vladimir Putin said that dividends for each state company will take into account real incomes of companies.

(60.3014 rubles – U.S. $1)

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