Russia is looking to minimize the impact of volatile oil and gas prices on its budget revenues and sees the share of oil and gas sales of its state income declining, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has said.
“We are moving towards reducing the share of volatile income and reducing Russia's dependence on oil and gas in favor of boosting our domestic economy,” Siluanov told RT Television’s Arabic news service in an interview, as quoted by Russian media.
A few years ago, oil and gas revenues made up 35-40% of Russia’s budget revenues, the minister said, adding that this share is set to drop to 27% next year, and to 23% in 2027.
Siluanov has recently told Parliament that Russia is moving to reduce its dependence on oil and gas revenues and will boost internal borrowings to finance the budget.
Russia’s budget proceeds from oil and gas sales declined by 0.9% in September from the previous month, according to official Russian government data published earlier this month.
The Russian budget received $8.13 billion (771.9 billion Russian rubles) from oil and gas sales last month, per the data, which confirmed earlier Reuters estimates that proceeds would be roughly stable month-on-month.
For the first nine months of the year, Russia’s oil and gas revenues surged by 49.4% annually to $87.5 billion (8.33 trillion rubles), according to the finance ministry data.
Proceeds from oil and gas sales are the most important cash stream for Russia’s federal budget. These revenues have typically accounted for around a third of all federal budget revenues.
Russia is now preparing for lower oil revenues resulting from depressed prices along with a more relaxed tax regime, Bloomberg reported last month, citing a draft three-year budget.
Per that document, oil revenues in Russia would decline by 14% over the next three years—provided international oil prices remain weak. For 2025, the document sees oil revenues of some $120 billion, or 10.94 trillion rubles, which would be a decline of 3.3% from this year. That modest decline would then extend into 2026 and 2027, by which year oil revenues would fall to $110 billion, according to the government’s current projections.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
