Increased military production and huge state spending are also helping Russia's industries continue to grow, helping to soften the economic impact of Western sanctions, the data also showed.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. Photo: Reuters
The data is published on the Federal Treasury's online budget portal and provides specific details on military spending. The Russian Finance Ministry stopped publishing monthly budget spending data in May last year, but has now added data for 2022 and earlier this year to the portal.
According to new data, defense spending amounted to 1.18 trillion rubles in January and 822.4 billion rubles in February 2023. Meanwhile, Russia spent only 525.4 billion rubles on defense in the first two months of 2022.
According to the 2023 spending plan, Russia plans to spend 4.98 trillion rubles on defense. But according to newly released data, Russia has spent more than 40% of the budget on defense in the first two months of the year.
Data released last week showed Russia's budget deficit widened to 3.4 trillion rubles from January to April due to heavy spending and falling energy revenues.
Last year, Russia spent 5.51 trillion rubles, or 17.1% of the total national budget, on defense, up from 3.57 trillion rubles, or 14.4%, in 2021.
In January-February 2023, defense spending accounted for 36.2% of total budget spending, nearly double the spending on social policies and nearly four times the spending on the economy .
In a recent speech, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov also told TASS news agency that Russia's defense product output could quadruple in 2023 compared to 2021 and 2022.
Trung Kien (according to TASS, Reuters)
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