You're reading: Oil price for Russia’s new fiscal rule might be about $50

The cut-off oil price for Russia's new fiscal rule might be about $50 per barrel, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said at the Exchange Forum.

“Yes, the price of oil is indeed the key volatile factor for budget revenues. I think that this is about $50 per barrel,” Siluanov said, speaking about the cut-off price for the new fiscal rule.

He also said that the Finance Ministry will not be able to draft the budget for 2017 by way of determining expenditure obligations based on the fiscal rule and that it will do so based on the need to simply reduce the imbalance of the budget.

“But in future, in 2018-2019, we will set the objective of compiling a budget according to certain principles. The budget structure should be built based on predictable revenues. The fiscal rule provides such predictability,” Siluanov said.

Siluanov said on Tuesday that the Finance Ministry has drafted a new version of the fiscal rule under which all additional revenues in the event of high oil prices will go into reserve funds.