On the evening of 9 September, Minfin announced a draft government resolution on purchases by state companies from small and medium-sized firms. Its core requirement is that a contract may not penalise a supplier more for delivering late than it penalises the customer for paying late. Minfin says the point is “to create equal conditions for both sides of the contract”. The resolution would take effect on 1 January 2027.

What Minfin proposes

The draft amends the rules under which small and medium-sized enterprises participate in the procurement of goods, works and services by certain classes of legal entity. This is the regime known by its law number, 223-FZ, which covers state companies and their subsidiaries. The draft sets three requirements for contracts with such suppliers.

First, a contract that provides for penalties against the SME must also provide for penalties against the customer. Second:

“The amount of penalties for each day of delay in the supply of goods, the performance of works or the provision of services must not exceed the amount of penalties for each day of delay by the customer in the performance of the obligations to pay for such goods, works and services provided for by the contract.”

Third, the maximum total penalties charged to the SME may not exceed the maximum total charged to the customer. The same requirements would apply to suppliers that use SMEs as subcontractors on their own contracts with customers.

The draft makes two further changes. Contracts concluded with SMEs after procurements excluded from the quota calculation would count towards the SME procurement quota. It also introduces financial liability for bidders whose bids in procurements open only to SMEs are systematically rejected: their bid security would be retained and transferred to the customer. Minfin says the measure is intended to prevent bids filed without a genuine intention to sign a contract.

What the release does and does not establish

Minfin's own statement of purpose is the strongest evidence in the release about the present state of these contracts: “These changes are aimed at creating equal conditions for both sides of the contract.” This is Minfin's characterisation of what it is trying to fix. It is a characterisation, not a measurement.

The release contains no measurement of any kind. It gives no volume of 223-FZ contracts with SMEs, no share with asymmetric penalties, and no sum of payments overdue from customers to such suppliers. The release therefore establishes who is asking for what, not how widespread the asymmetry is. We made the same distinction most recently over the Federation Council's proposals on regional borrowing: a proposal is evidence of who is asking, not proof of what they concluded.

Why a late invoice is a budget question

A penalty makes a payment deadline binding. Where late delivery is penalised and late payment is not, delay costs the customer nothing. Deferring payment then becomes the cheapest credit available to the organisation doing so. State companies covered by 223-FZ are among the largest counterparties of Russian small businesses.

That is the channel to the series we track, and it is indirect. As we set out on 3 September, overdue receivables measure bills that organisations have not paid each other; Rosstat publishes no breakdown of how much of the total is owed by a state customer. A supplier waiting for payment enters the series only at the next step — when it stops paying its own suppliers. This is the closest available indicator to the issue, but it does not measure it.

The date is part of the proposal

The draft is written to take effect on 1 January 2027. Whatever asymmetry exists in these contracts today, the proposal leaves it lawful for the remainder of 2026. The release does not say what would happen to contracts concluded before that date, and it names no date of adoption — only a date of effect if adopted.

What this changes in our model

Nothing today, and nothing this year.

Overdue receivables scores 9 out of 100, the worst of the eight, with unpaid invoices standing at 1.91× the pre-war level in real terms. The proposal points towards improvement in that series, but not before 2027 and only in the part that runs through 223-FZ contracts. Our indicator is deflated and indexed to January 2022, so a change confined to one contracting regime would have to be large to show up at all.

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

We have not read the draft. The release gives no link to the project's card on the regulation.gov.ru portal and the portal's public API did not respond. We therefore have Minfin's summary and the provisions it quotes, not the draft text, explanatory note or public-comment period.

We do not know the scale of anything here: not the value of 223-FZ contracts with SMEs, not how many carry asymmetric penalties, and not how much customers owe them past the due date. We do not know what would happen to contracts signed before 1 January 2027. Nor do we know who could check whether the rule is followed: 223-FZ provides no public register from which an outside observer could count contracts' penalty terms.