According to the report of Spot, the Ministry of Economy and Finance has published a budget message for 2024-2026. It sets out plans and forecasts related to government finances.
Ministry specialists presented a forecast for the budget for the next year. Its consolidated expenses are estimated at 312.8 trillion soums or 24% of GDP, while the budget deficit will amount to 4% of GDP.
About 29.8 trillion soums are planned to be spent on subsidies – this is 9.5% of total expenses. For comparison, the volume of social benefits will be 18.6 trillion soums (5.9%).
The bulk of the funds (28.38 trillion soums) will go to subsidies within the framework of state programs. At the same time, their volume will decrease compared to this year – according to the Ministry of Economy and Finance, it will amount to a little more than 31 trillion soums.
The largest item in the subsidization will be compensation for the difference between the prices for the purchase and sale of natural gas – 9.5 trillion soums will be allocated for this. At the same time, it should decrease by almost half compared to the forecast for 2023.
Another 4.49 trillion soums will go towards compensation to heating enterprises – approximately 2.5 times more than this year. This is only slightly less than the total budget expenditures on the education system (4.77 trillion soums).
Non-state kindergartens will receive 3.03 trillion soums from the budget (+9.7%). The next largest item of subsidies (2.5 trillion soums)—reimbursement of the difference in electricity prices—exceeds healthcare costs (2.16 trillion soums).
Subsidies for the purchase of housing will amount to 1.5 trillion soums or 28.4% more than this year. The same amount will be used to compensate for losses in public transport, compared to 705 billion soums in the current year.
The forecast volume of budget expenditures for 2025 is 362.5 trillion soums. Of these, it is planned to allocate 6 trillion soums (1.65%) to gas subsidies and 2.5 trillion soums (0.7%) to electricity subsidies.
In its August forecast for Uzbekistan, Fitch noted a likely increase in the budget deficit. The agency considers the delayed reform of energy tariffs and the maintenance of subsidies to be one of its reasons.