OREANDA-NEWS  In 2022, interest on government loans provided by Russia to foreign governments and their legal entities amounted to less than a quarter of the planned level. This follows from the materials on the implementation of the schedule of activities of the Ministry of Finance for the implementation of strategic planning documents for 2022 (the document is available to RBC, its authenticity was confirmed by a source familiar with the content). Instead of the planned 48.68 billion rubles. only 11.13 billion rubles were collected from foreign borrowers.

For comparison: in 2021, Russia's interest income on such loans amounted to just over 52 billion rubles, and in 2020 - more than 64 billion.

As the reason for the failure to achieve the target, the Ministry of Finance indicated "failure to receive payments from foreign borrowers in connection with the imposed sanctions restrictions." In February 2022, the US Treasury banned transactions with the Russian Central Bank, the Treasury and the National Wealth Fund (NWF). A similar measure to limit transactions with the Bank of Russia was issued by the European Union. VEB.RF, which acted as an agent for such payments to Russia from foreign countries, also fell under US and EU sanctions. RBC sent a request to the Ministry of Finance. The fact that interest income will be significantly lower than the level included in the forecast was expected. As RBC previously wrote, the authorities allowed its reduction in 2022 to 9.7 billion rubles. In 2023, these revenues are projected to grow to 40.3 billion rubles, followed from the draft federal budget for 2023–2025. In theory, such a volume should become possible, among other things, thanks to a new mechanism for the assignment of rights to claims on debt obligations. The right of the government to use it in 2023 was enshrined in the Budget Code. It is assumed that the assignment of rights of claim (de facto sale) can be made in favor of legal entities operating in the territory of the debtor country and not subject to sanctions, RBC reported. Thus, the authorities will be able to make prompt decisions to ensure that the federal budget receives the debt of foreign states to Russia.

In 2023, as of March 21, Russia received 0.3 billion rubles. interest income on debts of foreign countries and borrowing companies, follows from the data of the Electronic Budget portal. How much of the principal is returned is not disclosed, as the Ministry of Finance stopped publishing data on the sources of financing the budget deficit.

“Information on payments from debtor states is limited and is not disclosed by the Russian Ministry of Finance,” the press service of the ministry told RBC.