Mikhaylova Anna A.

Declining budget revenues, the coronavirus pandemic, economic sanctions imposed by unfriendly states, and other similar factors that have a significant impact on the budget and budget system require prompt management decisions. The fiscal policy of all budget levels is currently being implemented in conditions of turbulence, faced with the need to respond to the challenges of the new reality. The research hypothesis was that there are many facts and phenomena that reflect the presence of non-systemic external influence on the approval and execution of the budget. These include budget imbalance, deviation of its execution from the approved one, adjustments to the approved volumes of budget revenues and expenditures, asynchrony of its execution in during the financial year, etc. Using data collected from federal laws on the federal budget since 1999, as well as data from the Russian Treasury, we show that the above phenomena are generally characteristic of the budget policy of the Russian Federation, and elements of manual control only increase during crisis periods. At the same time, the lower levels of the budget system have fewer opportunities to respond to the challenges of turbulent time than the higher ones.

The applicability of the indicator of vertical fiscal imbalance and its components in the analysis of debt sustainability of Russian regions is considered. The concept of vertical imbalance of the International Monetary Fund is modified to include different types of intergovernmental transfers in the budgetary system of Russia. The data on regional credit ratings from Analytical Credit Rating Agency "ACRA" are used as a criterion for grouping regions, a regression analysis of the credit rating is carried out. It is found that vertical imbalance can be considered one of the promising tools in the analysis of regional debt sustainability. The inverse relationship between vertical imbalance and debt sustainability with the latter estimated through the value of the credit rating, is found. Deficit and federal intergovernmental transfers in 2020 increased vertical imbalance and reduced debt sustainability of the subjects of the Russian Federation. Vertical imbalance in regions with greater debt sustainability increased mainly due to the growth of deficit, while in less sustainable regions - due to intraregional centralization of federal earmarked intergovernmental transfers.