The share of the secret spending part of Russia’s budget keeps increasing. Apparently, international media sources cannot but ignore this fact and are glad to speculate on it! In particular, Voice of America’s Russian service claims that the aggregate sum of the Russian budget that will be spent on some secret projects over the next 3 years will reach RUR9,68 trillion!
Apparently, the experts are sure that this will make it harder to exercise public and expert control over these expense items and may eventually lead to systemic corruption.
How to treat these secret expense items? What can they really end up with? Let’s try to ponder on these questions together with Masterforex-V Academy experts.
Secret Spending
Russian mass media sources were the first to panic! Referring to a major expert from the Russian Institute of Economic Policy, they reported:
In 2014, the secret spending part of the Russian budget will reach 16.7%.
In 2015, this amount will escalate up to 21.4%.
In 2016, we may see an increase up to 24,8%.
If to take into account the current tendency as well as the fact that the figures were slightly over 11% in 2011, we may conclude that the share may double or nearly triple by 2017. This is a major increase!
Apparently, secret expense items should be in any country’s budget.
However, some experts assume that the rapid growth indicates that the Russian authorities are trying to conceal public spending from the people and experts. They say these are anti-national measures.
Meanwhile, other experts are trying to play a guessing game in order to find out what the secret spending is aimed at. In particular they offer the following scenarios:
· Higher spending on defense along with the modernization of Russia’s military infrastructure
· Supporting construction sector to supply the military with plenty of residential property as a part of improving the image of the Russian army…
· Maybe, the funds will be used to implement some secret currency interventions in order to prevent the devaluation of the Russian Ruble against the US Dollar
By the way, the Russian Ruble is currently trading around 31,691 per 1 USD. The chart below, courtesy of Masterforex-V Academy, reflects the current state of affairs in the market of USDRUB:
