MOSCOW: The average oil price in 2018 will fall to $40 per barrel, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said on Friday. “Yes, it will be some $40 (per barrel,” he told reporters at the 2017 St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. Russia’s budget for 2018 should be determined in the near term to take into account current forecasts, the finance minister said. “We are now actually living on credit, eating away reserves. Our task is to get out of this situation and make the budget balanced at the [oil] price of $40 per barrel,” Siluanov said. After 2019, Russia will be able to annually increase budget spending by 500 billion rubles ($8.8 billion), the finance minister said. “We’ll have to live through the uneasy years of 2018 and 2019. And from 2020, we’ll be able to increase expenditures by slightly more than 500 billion rubles a year,” he said.
The St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) is the most important annual economic conference held in Russia. Since 1997, heads of state, ministers, CEOs of Russian and foreign companies have been meeting to discuss economic issues that Russia and the developing countries are facing. Since 2005, Russia’s president has been taking part in the forum. The SPIEF platform is a place where big contracts are made. At the 2016 forum, more than 330 agreements totaling one trillion rubles (roughly $17.6 bln) were signed, while 12,000 people from 130 countries participated in the event.
The 2017 SPIEF, organized by the Roscongress State Foundation set up in 2016, will focus on the new economic reality and the search for new sources of growth. The 2017 SPIEF is dubbed Achieving a New Balance in the Global Economic Arena. TASS news agency is the general information partner and the official photohost agency of the event. The agency is also the operator of the forum’s presentation zone.
