On the evening of 8 September, deputy prime minister Dmitry Patrushev listed the measures the government is preparing for grain farmers. One came in the future tense, with a deadline: export duties on grain will be suspended until the end of the year. The customs-tariff subcommission took the decision on 2 September, with effect promised from 1 September. As of this morning, the official register of legal acts contains no decree to enact it. Until one appears, there is an announcement, not a suspension in law.

What the deputy prime minister said

“As a result, payment of export duties on grain will be suspended until the end of the year. The maximum duty on vegetable oil and meal is fixed at its August 2026 level.”

The same statement gives a harvest figure — 113.5 mn tonnes of grain so far — and lists the government's other measures. Some have been decided and some have not, but the release does not distinguish between them. Read closely, it contains three different kinds of measure.

The first has been signed. In late August, Patrushev says, “around 10 bn roubles” was allocated to subsidise the rail transport of agricultural produce from regions with large harvests. That measure exists as a document: government order No. 2313-р of 28 August, published on 29 August, directs “over 9.7 bn roubles” from the cabinet reserve fund to compensate rail operators for carrying agricultural freight at preferential tariffs. It is the only figure in the package backed by a signed act.

The second kind is decided but not enacted: the grain duties and the ceiling on oil and meal.

The third kind has not yet been decided, and the release says so in its own words. Per-hectare support for winter sowing is being “determined”. Extending short-term concessional loans and leasing contracts is “planned”. A temporary moratorium on farm bankruptcies, under which farms would retain agricultural-producer status even when they cannot sell their grain, is “under discussion”. The government “is considering” state purchasing interventions.

What the portal does not show

We checked the government-acts section of publication.pravo.gov.ru for the period from the subcommission's decision to this morning. Sixty acts were officially published between 2 and 9 September 2026: 19 decrees and 41 orders. The latest publication date in the register was 8 September; nothing dated 9 September had appeared when we checked. None of the sixty concerns export duties on grain.

Six of the sixty are titled only “On amendments to certain acts of the Government of the Russian Federation”, exactly the sort of generic title that could contain a duty amendment, so we opened each one. Decree No. 1140 amends procurement rules; No. 1139, the rules for subsidies to regional budgets; No. 1141, the state education programme; No. 1133, the rules on compulsory provision of statistical data; No. 1132, land rules in the free economic zone on occupied territory; No. 1124, the rules for grants and subsidies. None touches customs tariffs.

Absence from the portal is weaker evidence than presence. We said so on 1 September, when two presidential decrees governing fuel standards proved to be wholly unpublished. This case is different in one important respect: government decrees setting export duties are ordinary published acts, not instruments that remain out of public view. Their absence a week after the decision means that the decision has not yet become law, not that it is being concealed.

Interfax reports a higher duty

The variable duty on grain is recalculated weekly by the agriculture ministry and applies from the following Tuesday. According to Interfax, the ministry's calculation published on 4 September raised the wheat duty from 787.5 to 1,170.3 roubles a tonne, with effect from 9 September. We could not verify that figure at its source: mcx.gov.ru does not resolve from this machine, so the number comes from a news agency, not the ministry's own page. We report it as unverified, and it carries no weight in the analysis below.

The legal sequence does not depend on that figure. A subcommission decision is a recommendation to the government; the duty continues to be set by the existing mechanism until an act changes it. In the week after the announcement, the mechanism that it said would be suspended therefore kept operating.

Why a duty is a budget question

The grain export duty is non-oil-and-gas revenue for the federal budget. Its proceeds also fund support for the sector. Setting the duty to zero removes revenue but leaves the cost of supporting farmers in place; that cost must then be met from other budget lines. The 9.7 bn roubles for rail freight is one such expense, and purchasing interventions would be another.

The size of the gap is not stated anywhere. Neither the government nor the economy ministry has published an estimate of the duty revenue foregone. No draft decree has been published either, so we do not know whether the act will apply retroactively from 1 September. That will determine what happens to duty paid in the first days of the month.

There is one place where funding for agricultural exports can be counted, and it is almost exhausted. By 1 September, the federal project “Export of agricultural products” had spent 98.78% of its annual allocation: 50.0 bn roubles of 50.6 bn, up from 51.00% a month earlier. That is 24.2 bn roubles paid out in August alone, the second-largest jump that month in the file we read today for the national projects as a whole. What is left in that line is 0.6 bn roubles, 1.22% of the year's allocation. That is not nothing, and an allocation can be raised — the same file shows several moving inside a single month. But on the plan as it stands, the channel is spent.

The bankruptcy moratorium belongs on the same ledger. A farm that cannot sell its grain does not stop owing money; creditors stop pursuing it. Preserving agricultural-producer status for a farm without sales also preserves its access to concessional credit and its tax treatment. Both measures leave obligations outstanding rather than settling them. We have described the same pattern twice before: gas penalties waived in the border regions on 29 August, and tax deferral for drone-damaged firms on 24 August. In neither case did the debt disappear.

What this changes in our model

Nothing today. The measures could affect three indicators, but none has moved yet.

The budget deficit scores 65 out of 100. Suspending the duty would mean revenue not collected, while the accompanying support would be spending, so both effects point in the same direction. Only one item in the package carries a price: the 9.7 bn roubles for rail freight, which is 0.03% of the 31,724 bn roubles the budget spent from January to August. The revenue side has no published figure at all, so the net effect cannot be bounded from these documents. Unpriced is not the same as small.

Rail freight scores 33 out of 100 and is 0.6% below last year for the year to date through August. The 9.7 bn roubles subsidise exactly the movement that indicator counts — grain leaving the southern regions by rail. This is one of the rare cases in which a budget decision directly targets a series we track.

Overdue receivables scores 9 out of 100. A bankruptcy moratorium does not clear overdue receivables between organisations; it leaves them outstanding. If the moratorium is enacted, that indicator becomes harder to read rather than better.

The strength index stands at 47 out of 100, in the stress zone. No indicator moved in today's data update.

What we do not know

First, the cost. No figure has been published for the duty revenue foregone, the per-hectare support or the purchasing interventions, whose scale Patrushev did not give.

We do not know whether the decree will apply retroactively from 1 September because there is no published draft. If it does, we do not know what will happen to duty paid between 1 and 9 September. We could not read the agriculture ministry's own weekly calculation, so we cannot state what rate is currently in force.

Nor do we know which of the measures under discussion will become legal acts. Four of the seven items in the government's own list are described as being determined, planned, discussed or considered. One of the remaining three is backed by a signed order. The other two have a subcommission decision, a date of effect and, so far, no law to enact them.