Federal Fiscal Policy for Siberian Regions

The paper analyzes Russian fiscal policy toward Siberian regions. The assessment of efficiency of intergovernmental relations set in the spirit of fiscal federalism, in the author’s opinion, should be connected, first of all, with a balance between fiscal revenues and expenditures in regions. It is a matter of correlation of the demand for fiscal expenditures in time and opportunities to meet them by tax and non-tax revenues located in regions (without external resources). In general the SFD showed a good balance of regional demand and local resources to meet them except the recession years. The District could be considered as a self-sufficient region which can maintain its balance, although extremely vulnerable, of the regional revenues and spending. The opportunities to cover the demands by their own revenues significantly differ in the different regions, and a lack of own revenues is reimbursed through outer support. The question is a scope of such support to regions since any centralized support should take into account what appropriate share the region contributes to the total revenues of the country. To what degree our current fiscal policy meets these conditions is in focus of this paper. Our conclusions are: fiscal capacities of region-outsiders could not be less than their contributions to the total revenues of the country; and region-leaders’ contributions could not be an upper limit of their fiscal capacities due to the social and political requirements