In January – June, the Ministry of Finance issued intergovernmental export credits for 160 billion rubles, it follows from the information on the Electronic Budget portal. This is a record semi-annual volume in the entire history of observations (data published since 2010). Over the past year, Russia provided foreign governments in the form of loans of RUB 212 billion, according to the Federal Treasury. The amount of loans returned to Russia in the first half of 2021 amounted to 62 billion rubles. Thus, the volume of net lending to the rest of the world in January-June exceeded 100 billion rubles. This is also a record for the entire history of observations.
In total, according to the budget law, in 2021 it is planned to provide financial and export government loans for 355 billion rubles. As a rule, the government fails to fully fulfill its intentions to finance foreign governments. For example, in the pre-pandemic year 2019, the Ministry of Finance lent 215 billion rubles. in the form of interstate loans, while the plan for this year was 293 billion rubles.
Borrowing countries, as well as the purpose of loans, are in most cases classified. However, sometimes such deals are publicly announced. According to official data, interstate loans, as a rule, are provided to foreign borrowers to purchase Russian products, primarily defense products, or to pay for services.
For example, in December 2017, the issuance of an intergovernmental loan to Turkey for $ 2.5 billion was announced – the money was allocated for the acquisition of four divisions of Russian anti-aircraft missile systems. And in early 2019, it was announced that the Iranian parliament had approved the receipt of $ 5 billion from the Russian government in the form of a loan for the construction of infrastructure, primarily in the field of nuclear energy. In addition to defense and nuclear projects, Russia provided loans for the purchase of Russian rail and air transport, energy machines, trucks and weapons.
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