Problems of formation of the budget of the urban district

In December 2016 in the Russian Federation has ended one of the most important stages of the budget process - approval of the budgets of all levels. A feature of the new budget cycle 2017-2019 is the return to a three-year planning. As you know, in 2015, under the conditions of systemic social and economic crisis in the country and given the complications of international situation, the Russian authorities abandoned the practice of the three-year planning, and the budgets for 2016 were formed on a one-year basis. The base variant of the forecast of socio-economic development that forms the federal budget does not imply a fundamental change of economic growth model in the years 2017-2019. Judging by the basic parameters of the budgets of all levels, there will be no improvements in the budget system of the country. In these circumstances, the bodies of sub-federal and municipal government will find the task of budget development practically impossible. Moreover, the centralized model of budget formation that reallocates a major share of taxes collected in the territories in favour of the federation makes the regional and municipal authorities finance an increasing part of priority expenditures from attracted funds, one of the main tools of which are commercial loans. The problems of formation and execution of budgets are especially acute at the municipal level. According to the calculations of the Institute of Socio- Economic Development of Territories of RAS, in 2015, in 53 of the 70 administrative centers of Russia the provision of income per capita was below average. The article presents the results of the analysis of the budget of the city of Vologda for 2017-2019; the main task of the analysis was to determine how the three-year budget aims to solve the tasks of socio-economic development of the city. The results obtained allowed the author to conclude that the city budget for the coming short-term cycle will become, in fact, a survival budget. Its main task is to prevent a yet another possible failure to satisfy the primary needs of people’s livelihood, which will require that the city authorities implement the policy of strict budget consolidation.