Alexander Zolotov: "The budget of the Nizhni Novgorod region for 2017 will be a development budget"

"The budget of the Nizhni Novgorod region for 2017 will be a development budget", says Professor Alexander Zolotov, Head of the UNN Department of Economic Theory and Methodology, commenting on the draft of the balanced regional budget for 2017. "What do you notice when looking at the budget? You see that the budget grows faster than the expected inflation. What does this mean? It means that the budget has grown in real terms. In the nineties, one could increase the numbers, with budgets of billions and trillions of roubles, but the budgets "shrank" in real terms. Today, one can see that ours is a development budget: it has really increased and will continue to grow, because the inflation rate will by any means be lower than ten percent; it is now going down and will also decrease during the next year according to all plans, while the budget revenues will increase by 10% in nominal terms. Hence, they will grow in real terms. The second question is about the means to achieve the desired growth. Currently, the region relies in its development on its own earnings. In my view, our development priorities are quite correct, they include education, healthcare, and social security. In this sense, generally speaking, our budget is balanced enough", concludes Professor Zolotov.