Reflection of expenditure priorities in regions’ budget planning

The paper investigates the extent to which the strategic and budgetary documents of constituent entities of the Russian Federation reflect a multi-scenario approach to forecasting budget parameters and identify spending priorities. The analysis is based on the example of the regions included in the Northwestern Federal District. The relevance of the study is due to the fact that budget policy as a whole has a multi-scenario nature. Therefore, in order to increase the effectiveness of public administration on the part of the authorities, it is important to assess the risks of budget execution and develop a response plan to minimize their negative consequences, which requires, among other things, prioritization of expenditures. The paper uses methods of structural and substantive analysis of regulatory and program documents of strategic and budgetary planning at the level of constituent entities of the Russian Federation, the method of rating regional budget planning documents according to the authors’ criteria and the method of grouping budget expenditures within regional projects, which are a decomposition of federal projects. The scientific significance of the study lies in formulating the problem of using a multi-scenario approach in the development of budget planning documents and reflecting spending priorities in them, assessing the severity of this problem at the regional level and common ways to address it. The novelty of the work lies in the fact that for the first time all the main documents of budget forecasting and planning in the regions of the Northwestern Federal District have been studied. It has been established that the vast majority of budget forecasts and the main directions of budget policy are presented only in the basic version. Strategic and budget planning documents virtually do not offer a multivariate forecast of regional budget revenue and expenditure items. Consequently, spending priorities are not set properly. It is shown that a significant proportion of actual regional expenditures coincide with federal priorities and they reflect the list of expenditure obligations stipulated in federal legislation. The theoretical significance of the study lies in substantiating the need to apply a multi-scenario approach to the disclosure of budget policy priorities at the regional level, the practical significance consists in updating the details of documents for medium- and long-term strategic and budgetary planning – in preparing a separate section with disclosure of information on a multi-scenario approach to forecasting and on priority areas of spending