| The State Duma's Yabloko faction presented its
annual alternative budget
Tuesday while slamming the government for once again drafting
a
"hydrocarbonated" budget hooked on oil and gas.
"This is a hydrocarbon budget," said first deputy Yabloko
head Sergei
Ivanenko. The 2003 budget -- which faces its first reading in
the Duma on
Wednesday -- reflects a lack of any effort to create mechanisms
for
economic growth that could take Russia away from the "oil
needle the
country has been addicted to" for decades, he said.
The oil and gas sectors are responsible for about 50 percent
of all budget
revenues, he said.
Wednesday's reading is to set key macroeconomic factors such
as budget
revenues, the inflation rate and the ruble/dollar exchange rate,
as well
the forecasted crude oil price on which the budget is based.
Yabloko is in general agreement with key macroeconomic factors
and is
giving its members a free choice on how to vote on the first reading.
Ivanenko, however, said the government had failed to account
for some 53.5
billion rubles ($1.7 billion) from export duties, taxes and other
sources.
This cash, Yabloko's representatives said, could be spent on
various urgent
and socially important issues such as state employees' salaries,
army
reform, ambulance services and programs aimed at children.
Deputy Yabloko head Igor Artemyev said putting 5 billion to 10
billion
rubles into Russia's ailing ambulance service could save thousands
of
lives. Every tenth person who dies from a heart attack was lost
because
basic medical help arrived too late, he said.
Union of Right Forces deputies also said Tuesday that the budget
was far
from perfect.
"I will recommend to my colleagues thet they vote against
the budget in the
first reading because the government refuses to open many of the
articles
of the defense budget that are secret," said Boris Nadezhdin,
the first
deputy head of the Union of Right Forces, Interfax reported.
See also:
Budget 2003
| 