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- The bet will play out: the authorities have found a way to increase income from free treasury funds
The bet will play out: the authorities have found a way to increase income from free treasury funds
The authorities intend to increase revenues from temporarily free budget money, Izvestia found out. We are talking about funds that have already been received by the treasury, including from taxpayers, but have not yet been spent on expenses. They are partially allocated to bank deposits and accounts in order to earn interest income. The Ministry of Finance proposed to select financial institutions for this through exchange trading — market participants will compete by offering higher rates. In 2025, the Treasury earned 1.3 trillion rubles on deposits and accounts. Whether the new mechanism will help increase revenue is discussed in the Izvestia article.
The Ministry of Finance wants to increase revenue from available funds
In Russia, they want to change the way they place free budget funds in bank accounts. This proposal was made by the Ministry of Finance. Izvestia studied the draft resolution of the department. We are talking about money that has already entered the treasury from taxpayers and other items, but has not yet been used for expenses.
The authorities usually deposit some of these funds in accounts and deposits with commercial banks in order to earn interest income. The Treasury Department is currently checking the reliability of credit institutions, and then conducting a selection of applications for money placement among the admitted participants. At the same time, there are no special trades, and market players do not know what conditions others offer. The Treasury actually sets all the conditions itself — the limit, the rate, the term of the contract, the settlement procedure and the volume of the placement.
In order to increase the efficiency of funds management and increase their profitability, the Ministry of Finance proposed to select banks through exchange trading. In fact, they will compete by offering a higher bid than others. It is assumed that contracts will be concluded at a fixed or floating rate. The parameters will be determined by the Treasury based on the recommendations of the Central Bank.
A similar system with competitive selection is already in effect when placing budget money on deposits. Now they want to extend it to accounts.
The main difference between deposits and accounts is in liquidity. The first ones are designed primarily for profitability and placement of money for a certain period of time. A bank account allows for more flexible management of funds — to maintain prompt access to them without loss of interest in the event of withdrawal of part of the amount and at the same time generate income. The account limit is determined, and the actual balance may vary within its limits. At the same time, the rates on accounts are usually lower than on deposits.
In 2025, the Treasury earned more than 1.2 trillion rubles from placing money on bank deposits, and about 86 billion rubles on accounts, that is, about 1.3 billion in total, follows from the department's data. In the first half of 2026, the total amount amounted to more than 0.6 trillion rubles.
If banks are forced to compete with rates, the government will be able to receive even more from placing free money in accounts, says Vladimir Chernov, an analyst at Freedom Global. In open auctions, financial institutions will be able to see competitors' offers without mentioning their names and will improve their offers, he explained.
The new mechanism will also help to increase the transparency of the system and give market participants more information, Finam analyst Igor Dodonov added.
But it is necessary to maintain the requirements for the reliability of credit institutions, warned a senior lecturer at the Department of Global Financial Markets and Fintech of the Russian University of Economics. Plekhanova Andrey Sanakoev. Vladimir Klimanov, Director of the IPEI Regional Policy Center at the Presidential Academy, agreed with him. He recalled that the Treasury is the third most important revenue administrator of the federal budget after the Federal Tax Service and the Federal Customs Service. Therefore, it must maintain high standards, and not just seek to place money at high interest rates.
How much extra money will the budget earn
It is difficult to estimate the exact effect of how much the new mechanism will help increase revenues, said Mikhail Zeltser, an expert on the stock market at BCS World of Investments. The fact is that the supply and demand of liquidity in the market are unstable and depend on the specific situation. For example, if banks have an increased need for funding, they may offer more attractive terms, and vice versa.
In general, competitive rates through exchange trading are unlikely to be significantly higher than the current ones in the money market (about 14%), Mikhail Zeltser believes.
— An increase in the rate by 0.1 percentage points with an average annual balance of 1 trillion rubles gives an additional 1 billion rubles per year. If the auction provides an increase of 0.25–0.5 percentage points, with the same balance, revenue will increase by 2.5–5 billion rubles per year," said Vladimir Chernov from Freedom Global.
These amounts seem small on a budget scale, but it should be borne in mind that in 2025, the Treasury placed about 126 trillion rubles in bank deposits, and about 99 trillion in accounts, according to the department's report. If they were stored all year, it would mean that even an increase in profitability by only 0.1 percentage points could lead to additional revenues of almost 100 billion rubles per year. This is almost as much as, for example, the tax service collected from large businesses due to stricter controls, as previously reported by Izvestia.
If the auctions provide an increase of 0.5 percentage points, which is also possible due to a lack of liquidity, then additional revenues from these calculations may already amount to 0.5 trillion rubles.
In any case, the actual result will depend on the amount of money in the accounts, the duration of their placement and the rates. There is no calculation of additional income in the draft and explanatory note. Izvestia sent a request to the Ministry of Finance and the Treasury with a request to assess the economic impact of the proposed measures.
The new initiative will make it possible to increase the efficiency of using available budget funds, experts agreed. At the same time, the treasury's task now will be not to pursue high yields to the detriment of the bank's reliability. In addition, it is necessary to keep the opportunity to return the money on time for budget payments.
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