“Money is getting scarce.” The governor of Belgorod complained about budget problems due to shelling

The Belgorod region, which has become a frontline region where it is shelled almost daily from Ukrainian territory, suffers from a lack of funds in the budget, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov complained on Monday.

After the events in Shebekin, a city 6 km from the Ukrainian border, which was shelled twice by the Ukrainian Armed Forces over the weekend, “money is running out,” Gladkov told a regional government meeting (quoted by RBC).

In particular, difficulties arise with the help of enterprises affected by shelling. According to Gladkov, he intends to meet with the head of the Ministry of Economic Development, Maxim Reshetnikov, to ask for support from the federal treasury. The governor also ordered the preparation of appeals to the Ministry of Agriculture and a government commission chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin for local agricultural enterprises to receive compensation from the state.

At the end of last year, the Belgorod region recorded a local budget deficit of 39.6 billion rubles. Having collected 135 billion rubles in taxes, the regional authorities spent 174.6 billion rubles.

The region’s budget includes a fall in tax revenues by 11%, to 120.6 billion rubles. At the same time, an even greater reduction in spending is planned – by 21%, to 138.6 billion rubles. This, according to the law on the budget of the Belgorod region, should almost halve the “hole” in local finance – up to 18 billion rubles.

In total, Russian regions will receive about 1.9 trillion rubles of consolidated budget deficit this year, Expert RA analysts predict. The agency believes that in order to patch the “hole”, governors will have to spend the accumulated “cash cushion”, the size of which can be reduced by 800 billion rubles a year.

However, several regions no longer have reserves, the RA expert reminds: Tyva, Kalmykia, Buryatia, Karelia, Murmansk Oblast and Chukotka Autonomous Okrug spent all their bank account balances last year.