The Ministry of Finance has published a preliminary assessment of the federal budget execution for January-July 2025.

According to this estimate, the budget deficit over the past seven months has amounted to 4.879 trillion rubles, or 2.2% of GDP. Initially, the deficit for this year was planned at only 0.5% of GDP or 1.173 trillion rubles. But at the end of April, due to lower oil prices on the world market, amendments were made to the budget law for the 25th year, which included a deficit of 1.7% of GDP or 3.792 trillion rubles. The deficit for 7 months is at the level of 5 trillion rubles

One of the main reasons for the increased budget deficit is the decrease in oil and gas revenues. And this happened not only because of the fall in oil prices on the world market below 70 per barrel.

If earlier, when oil prices fell, the ruble began to weaken against the dollar and thereby compensated for the decrease in ruble oil and gas revenues, this year the opposite happened. The ruble has strengthened strongly against the background of lower oil prices. Let me remind you that the Ministry of Finance has set the dollar at 94.3 rubles in the budget law for the 25th year, and in recent months the exchange rate has been at 80 rubles. It is clear that with such introductory payments, oil and gas revenues suffer greatly.

The budget deficit situation is clearly continuing to worsen. And in such circumstances, it's only a matter of time before the ruble starts to weaken.