ITAR-TASS. The Finance Ministry expects MED to revise its forecast for the ruble’s exchange rates upward, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said at a meeting held by the working group for the budget policy at the State Duma.
“We stipulated a high exchange rate of the dollar against the ruble, Rub 37. When we formed the forecast this appeared to be a real exchange rate. The Bank of Russia says now that we set a too low exchange rate for the ruble,“ he said, adding the next forecast, which the Ministry for Economic Development will make, will contain the ruble’s much stronger exchange rates. “And, consequently, budget revenues will grow as a one-ruble upward revision gives Rub 200 bln in revenues,” he added.
At the same time, according to him, Russia’s public debt would grow to 15% of GDP by 2017. Based the Finance Ministry’s estimates, “this is already a big figure”.
“This already constitutes a substantial jump both for our economy and our finance, a heavy debt is unacceptable, we are still dependent on oil and gas. And any changes on the external markets tend to push up external components of the public debt and, consequently, create debt servicing problems," the finance minister added.
On Thursday Anton Siluanov said that the Finance Ministry plans to boost domestic borrowings to Rub 1—1.1 tln a year in 2015—2017. During this period external loans might total around $7 bln a year. The country’s public debt equaled 12% of GDP in 2013.
