Fiscal Gap: an Estimate for Russia

Abstract

Fiscal gap is an indicator of long run sustainability of government finance. It is derived from intertemporal budget constraint which connects flows of budget outlays and receipts aggregated along decades. In order to get an estimate of Russia’s general government fiscal gap we consider three scenarios which are based on different assumptions regarding demographic trends, productivity growth, extractable reserves of oil and natural gas, long-term price of oil and natural gas, etc. Estimated value of fiscal gap implies that current fiscal policy cannot provide budget sustainability in the long run. There are two major factors of the budget imbalances: rising health and pension expenditures due to demographic trends and shrinking role of tax revenues from the energy sector due to extraction growth rate projected to be lower than GDP growth. This study is an extension of (Goryunov et al., 2013).