Issue ? 43. April 2014

The Russian Budgetary Reform at Its Present Stage

Ph.D., Associate Professor, School of Public Administration, Lomonosov Moscow State University.
E-mail: javoronkova@spa.msu.ru

The main stages of budgetary system reformation from 2004 till now are considered in the article. Analysis of the results of budgetary process in 2004–2006 revealed that performance management has become the main mechanism of perfecting the budgetary system of public (municipal) finance management. As a consequence of the reform, the budgetary process became program- and objective-oriented. However, the principles of estimated financing of budgetary institutions were in contradiction with the principles of performance management and program objective management. So the reform of budgetary institutions, i. e. changing principles of their financing, became necessary.

The author emphasizes the new stage of budgetary reformation, which is oriented at increasing the budgetary institutions transparency and their public disclosure. Implementation of International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) (and subsequent development of new federal standards for Russian public sector) has become the main instrument of the reform. Accounting of public sector organizations based on IPSAS is more informational for the external user who gets an insight to the scale of such organization’s economics, its expenditures on public services, surplus (deficit) formation, etc. The transition to International Accounting Standards (IAS) and IPSAS will not only raise information content of organizations’ accounting but also may require changing the general accounting paradigm in Russia.

Keywords

Budget, budgetary reform, budgetary institution, accounting, International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS).