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The meeting was attended by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Maxim Oreshkin, Minister of Economic Development Maxim Reshetnikov, Minister of Finance Anton Siluanov, and Governor of the Central Bank Elvira Nabiullina.

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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Colleagues, good afternoon,

The Government has begun drafting the federal budget for the next three years from 2026 to 2028.

We are talking about the country’s main fiscal document, which addresses strategic issues, including, of course, improving the quality of life of our citizens, developing the social sphere and infrastructure, and strengthening the country’s defence capability.

As always, drafting a budget is a challenging, systemwide, comprehensive and, I would say, complex task. Professionally, it is of purely economic and financial nature, but it is, of course, political as well, because it calls for coordinating every position with the parliament and the leading parliamentary parties. This work primarily relies on the socioeconomic development forecast, the current and anticipated situation in the real sector, including such sectors as finance. I will not list everything, since it is clear what you are working on. Of course, it is necessary to take into account the situation on the global markets.

In this regard, I suggest that we discuss the state of affairs in the domestic economy in general, and its main trends. Of course, we will talk specifically about the execution of the federal budget this year.

This year, the Government and the Bank of Russia faced a joint task of returning the Russian economy to a trajectory of balanced growth. We know what this means. This primarily implies curbing inflation, while keeping unemployment at a steadily low level. I will say a few words about this as well.

In this regard, lowering inflation is an important achievement. In late March, it stood at 10.3 percent in yearly terms, and in late June it was down to 9.4 percent, and by late July it was as low as 8.8 percent.

The Bank of Russia estimates that by the end of this year, the consumer price dynamics may be within six to seven percent, that is, lower than forecasted.

There are signs of a decrease in labour shortages on the labour market. According to surveys also conducted by the Bank of Russia, the share of enterprises with staff shortages is decreasing, which is certainly an important and telling signal.

At the same time, many experts are talking about the emergence of ‘hypothermia’ risks (when the Russia economy is cooling too fast) and even a recession. We discussed this earlier during our working meetings. We constantly discuss this matter with the Governor of the Bank of Russia. The Central Bank monitors the situation and works directly with enterprises to assess the situation. It does not see any major risks currently, as far as I understand.

However, hidden unemployment is growing, meaning that some workers are in the so-called downtime, employed part-time, or are at risk of being laid off. At the beginning of the year, their number was about 98,000, in late June 153,000, and up at 199,000 as of August 8.

The number of registered unemployed has also slightly increased. At the beginning of the year, it stood at about 274,000 people, in late June 291,000 people, and in early August at 300,000 people. Still, it remains at record low levels. How many do we have now?

Minister of Economic Development Maxim Reshetnikov: 2.2.

Vladimir Putin: 2.2 percent. Almost a historical low. Still, we need to sense ongoing trends and respond to them accordingly in order to prevent, as we said at the beginning of the year, excessive cooling of the economy.

I ask my colleagues from the relevant ministries and agencies and from the regions to be in constant contact with business associations and the entrepreneurial community, to help address emerging issues, and to respond to requests from enterprises, companies, and their workforces.

The federal budget dynamics are stable. Non-oil and gas revenue of the federal budget added 14 percent year-on-year in January-July, amounting to 14.8 trillion rubles.

At the same time, the so-called turnover taxes grew by 6.7 percent in January-July compared to the same period last year. The VAT grew by 6.9 percent.

This is what I wanted to say at the beginning.

Let’s get to work and discuss the issues at hand. The floor goes to Mr Siluanov. Please.

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