News
Oil and gas revenues of the Russian budget increased by 68.5% year-on-year in the first half of 2024, reaching 5.698 trillion rubles(~$64.4 billion), Russia’s Ministry of Finance reports in its press release. Meanwhile, non-oil and gas revenues also increased — by 26.6% — compared to the same period of last year and amounted to 11.395 trillion rubles (~$129.3 billion).
Total revenues of the Russian budget in the first half of the year amounted to 17.093 trillion rubles (~$194 billion). Coupled with expenditures of 18.022 trillion rubles (~$204.5 billion), this brings the budget deficit to 929 billion rubles (~$10.5 billion), or 0.5% of the country's GDP. To compare, in the same period of 2023, the budget deficit amounted to 2.34 trillion rubles (~$26.6 billion, or 1.4% of GDP).
Notably, the increase in Moscow's oil and gas revenues stems from rising prices for Russian oil, and the ministry expects these revenues to keep growing in the short term. At the same time, socio-economic development forecasts suggest a slight decrease in Russia’s additional fossil fuel revenues at the end of 2024 under the fiscal rule.
As the Ministry of Finance reported in April, oil and gas revenues in Russia's federal budget amounted to 2.9 trillion rubles (~$33 billion) in the first quarter of 2024, showing a 79.1% year-on-year growth. Furthermore, it was later revealed that Russia’s share in European gas imports in May 2024 exceeded that of the U.S. for the first time in nearly two years, despite the EU’s efforts to phase out Russian fossil fuels after the start of Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.