The budget package Minfin submitted to the government on 24 September includes a separate bill. It collects no money and hands out none; it changes when money is paid. Repayments of budget credits due in 2027–2029 would be deferred until after 2030. The ministry’s official text — minfin.gov.ru serves us a 503, so we read the full version at Garant — puts the sum at 300 billion roubles. It also says that some repayments due in 2026, amounting to 100 billion, had already been deferred. This would be the second such deferral, three times the size of the first.
What the text says
“The budget package also contains a bill to defer, for the regions, repayments of budget credits due in 2027–2029 until after 2030. This measure will allow the regions to reallocate 300 billion in budget resources to priority tasks. Earlier, on the President’s instructions, a similar decision was taken to move repayment of some budget credits due in 2026 to 2030, giving the regions an additional 100 billion roubles.”
A budget credit is a region’s debt to the federal budget with a fixed repayment schedule. Moving the date extinguishes no debt and adds not a kopeck of revenue: it removes from the next three years a payment that would otherwise have to come from the region’s own funds or new borrowing. The 300 billion is the part being moved, not the whole of the three years’ payments. The text does not say how much the regions were due to repay over 2027–2029 in total.
A deferral we have seen before
The text neither dates nor names the earlier decision Minfin recalls. The mechanics it describes — payments due in 2026 moved to 2030 — match what decree No. 1095 of 28 August did: it removed from this year’s schedule payments on the third of the debt that the regions do repay, while allowing regions with budget sufficiency up to 0.9 to spend the freed money on the war. The decree itself did not give the figure of 100 billion; only the present Minfin text does.
If the new bill passes, four years of payments will be due in 2030 or later — those moved out of 2026 and now those due in 2027–2029. The repayment schedule empties for four years; the obligations pile up where they have been pushed. This is the series we have followed since late August: treasury credits for cash gaps at 0.1% a year for all regions, the Federation Council’s proposals to fix rates on regions’ loans, transfers from the government’s reserve fund for the “balance” of regional budgets. The centre is propping up regional balance sheets with every instrument at once, including by agreeing to wait for money it is owed.
A deferral is not a loss — nor is it income
Our standing distinction between deferred and lost works in both directions here. The federal budget does not lose these 300 billion: the debt stays on the books and the claim goes nowhere. But in 2027–2029 it will not receive inflows included in its own calculations. This is the same federal budget whose deficit for those years has just been planned at “around 2% of GDP annually”, twice the figure in the current law; the details are in today’s piece on the package. The consolidated balance of regional budgets in 2027–2029 will improve by exactly the payments not made. That improvement measures not the regions’ revenues but the centre’s willingness to wait.
What this changes in our model
Today, nothing changes: this is a bill whose text does not yet exist, and no indicator number moves.
Regional budgets stand at 31 of 100: the regions’ rolling twelve-month consolidated balance is −1.509 trillion roubles as of August. If the deferral passes, this series will improve from 2027 by the sum of the payments not made — without a single new kopeck of regional revenue. The strength index is at 47.1 of 100, in the stress zone. The state of all eight indicators is on the monitor.
What we do not know
The bill’s text. It is due in the State Duma by 1 October with the rest of the package. So it is unknown which credits the deferral covers — treasury infrastructure credits, restructured ones or all at once; whether only the principal moves or the interest too; whether the deferral operates automatically or on a region’s application.
The denominator. How much in repayments fell due over 2027–2029 in total is not stated: 300 billion is the moved part, not the three years’ whole schedule.
Whether the earlier decision is decree No. 1095. Minfin’s text describes it without a date or a number. We see that the mechanics and the years match decree No. 1095, but we do not assert it is that decree; the figure of 100 billion is not in the decree’s own text.