Russia's regional budgets are in surplus. On 2 September the Bank of Russia published the September issue of its regional economy report. Box 1 gives the number: for January–July 2026, the consolidated budgets of the constituent entities ran a surplus of 188 billion roubles, against 249 billion a year earlier. The same box then shows where the surplus comes from: two constituent entities.
What the box says
The report covers seven macroregions. Revenue grew in all seven, though at very different speeds — from 1.2% year on year in the Urals to 15.3% in the Far East. Both revenue and expenditure lagged the federal budget: 5.5% and 6.0% against 8.8% and 14.5%.
Then comes the composition:
“The surplus came mainly from Central Russia, where the consolidated budget as a whole recorded a surplus of 278 billion roubles (369 billion roubles in the same period of 2025). But it was provided almost entirely by Moscow and Moscow region; without them, the district's regional budgets ran a deficit of 26 billion roubles (a surplus of 7 billion roubles).”
And the year-end expectation:
“For 2026 as a whole, the consolidated budgets of every macroregion are expected to record a negative balance. The planned deficit for 2026 was also revised upwards — in Volga-Vyatka, for example, it rose to 228 billion roubles.”
The arithmetic the box does not spell out
Two of those figures can be put together. Central Russia produced 278 billion of surplus; without Moscow and Moscow region, the same district ran a deficit of 26 billion. So Moscow and its region together produced 304 billion. The national total is 188 billion. Everything else in the country — every other region in Central Russia and all six remaining macroregions — therefore came to minus 116 billion roubles.
Run the same calculation on last year's figures, which the box supplies in brackets. Moscow and Moscow region produced 362 billion; the rest of the country came to minus 113 billion. Compare the two years and almost all of the deterioration sits in one place: the national surplus fell by 61 billion, Moscow and its region account for 58 billion of that, and the rest of the country moved by 3 billion.
This is the difference between a level and its composition, and it is one of the misleading frames this site exists to correct. A reader told that Russia's regions are in surplus has been told something true. A reader who assumes that this describes the regions has been misled by an aggregate carried by two constituent entities.
How the gap is being covered
The box is explicit about the financing. The first source is money already sitting in accounts; after that, regions “have begun using bank loans to cover cash gaps”. With the key rate falling, commercial borrowing is becoming more available, and the report says it is expanding in every macroregion. In the Far East, the CBR notes a variant of the same pattern: with total commercial debt unchanged, Sakhalin region is repaying high-rate loans faster and replacing them with cheaper ones to cut its debt-servicing costs.
Moving the other way is federal debt relief. Under the mechanism that writes off up to two-thirds of budget-credit debt, following the president's instructions after his 2024 address, the government wrote off debt for 60 regions in 2026 — more than 260 billion roubles.
So the same seven months combine a federal subsidy delivered retroactively as debt relief with a broad shift into commercial debt that regions will service for years.
The decree we could not find yesterday
Yesterday we wrote that the treasury credit “on demand” had been extended to every region from 1 September, and that the government decree behind it was not on the portal of legal acts. That was wrong, and the correction matters more than the original point.
The act is decree No. 1015 of 18 August 2026, published on 20 August under publication number 0001202608200045 — eleven days before Minfin's release. It is findable only by reading the portal's blocks in sequence, because its title contains none of the words the release uses: legally the instrument is a “budget credit to top up the balance of funds in the single account of the budget”, under article 93.6 of the Budget Code.
The act contains three things that are not in the release.
It is an experiment, and it is for one year. Point 1 orders the Federal Treasury to conduct it “in 2026”; point 2 requires Minfin and the Treasury to report to the government on how it went by 31 March 2027. This is not a permanent addition to inter-budget relations. It is a measure that can simply not be renewed.
The participants are named by Minfin, not by the map:
“3. To establish that the participants in the experiment are: the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation; the Federal Treasury (territorial bodies of the Federal Treasury); the constituent entities of the Russian Federation determined by the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation.”
A region that wants a cheap monthly overdraft instead of a commercial loan depends on a decision of the federal ministry. Set beside the box above — commercial borrowing expanding in all macroregions — that means the cheap alternative exists and is handed out by name.
And the rate is not in the act at all. Point 14 refers to the rate set by part 3 of article 11 of the federal budget law for 2026 and the planning period of 2027 and 2028. The 0.1% we reported yesterday is Minfin's figure from its press release, not the decree's.
The decree also answers something we listed yesterday as unknown. If a region does not repay on time, point 16 requires the territorial Treasury body to terminate the contract unilaterally, with the debt, including fines and penalties, recovered under paragraph two of point 5 of article 93.6. Repayment is due within the first five working days of the month following the drawing, the application must be filed no later than the working day before the money is needed, and interest is payable no later than 30 December 2026. Point 5 also ties eligibility to the requirements in the rules approved by decree No. 721 of 20 August 2013 — so this is a variation on an instrument that has existed for thirteen years, not a new one.
What is still missing is the list. The act does not name the regions Minfin has designated, and it sets no sum: point 9 says the size follows Minfin's proposals and may not exceed the amount under point 2 of article 93.6.
The revenue base underneath
On the same day, Rosstat published its January–July report, and it describes what is happening to the profit-tax base that regional revenue rests on. In the first half of 2026 the net financial result of organisations was 11,696.2 billion roubles — 86.7% of the same period last year. 42.7 thousand organisations earned 17,058.0 billion in profit; 21.5 thousand lost 5,361.8 billion.
“In the first half of 2026, according to operational data, the share of loss-making organisations increased by 3.1 percentage points compared with the corresponding period of the previous year and amounted to 33.5%.”
One organisation in three. The industry split is sharper still: coal mining ran a loss of 153.3 billion roubles, with 67.3% of its companies unprofitable, a return on sales of −1.2% and a return on assets of −4.1%; metallurgy lost 37.9 billion, with 41.6% unprofitable. Manufacturing as a whole came to 72.9% of last year. The one large branch moving the other way is oil and gas extraction, at 2,179.9 billion and 173.5%.
The two documents meet here. The CBR's box, listing where profit-tax receipts fell, names Kemerovo region for continuing difficulties in coal and Sverdlovsk region for lower output in metallurgy. Rosstat, from a different collection, gives the national numbers for those same two industries. That is two independent sources describing one thing.
What this changes in our model
Nothing today, and the reason is worth stating precisely. Regional budgets score 28 out of 100; the rolling twelve-month consolidated balance stood at −1.616 trillion roubles through July. The CBR's 188 billion is not an update to that number. Ours is a rolling twelve-month balance built from Minfin's data; the box's figure is a January–July cumulative from the Electronic Budget system. They are two different quantities and pairing them would be an error.
What the box adds is something our series does not carry at all: a decomposition. Our number says the regions are in deficit over twelve months. The CBR figure says that in the seven months when they were collectively in surplus, two constituent entities produced that surplus.
What we do not know
The box gives absolute balances for only two macroregions — Central Russia at +278 billion and the Urals, whose deficit narrowed to 66 billion on own-revenue growth of 2.5% with no growth in spending. Figure В-1-5 plots the rest without numeric labels. There is no split of the 304 billion between Moscow and Moscow region; that figure is the two of them together.
Nor is there a sum for the commercial borrowing. “Have begun using” is the whole of it — no volume for any macroregion. And the forecast of a negative balance everywhere in 2026 is built on the regions' own budget plans rather than an independent estimate; the CBR adds that the outcome will depend on how much of the planned spending is actually executed and how much own revenue is collected.
On the treasury credit, the two things that would make it measurable are still absent: which regions Minfin has designated, and how much they may draw. Rosstat's figures are operational data and will be revised, and its report excludes small businesses; the CBR's regional statistics, by its own note, are published without the occupied Ukrainian regions Russia claims as Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.