Who wrote off the debts of Russia?
Information about the writing off of debts to various countries of the world from Russia causes a mixed reaction in Russian society. According to supporters of the government’s idea of writing off debts, this measure is productive, as it allows the Russian Federation to declare its focus on economic and political partnership and add to the list of its allies in different regions of the world. Opponents of the idea of writing off debts are sure that unreasonable generosity on the part of the current Russian authorities, based on the “generosity” of past generational taxpayers, will not lead to anything good. They say that it was not you who lent money, not you to sign the write-off agreements ... Each of the opponents has his own hard arguments, whether justified or, conversely, writing off debts to various countries of the world was counterproductive for the country's economy and political image. Before each reader can draw his own conclusion, it is necessary to refer to the recent stories debt relief both from the Russian Federation and in relation to it. We will begin by presenting a list of those states that in recent years (since the discovery of solvency on their debts) official Moscow has decided to forgive a certain percentage of their debt. When submitting a list, we will adhere to information that at various times came from official sources.
Year 2000. Writing off a 11 billionth (in dollar equivalent) debt Vietnam.
Year 2003. Write-off Iraqi debt in the amount of 12 billions of dollars.
Year 2007. Russia writes off Algeria debt in the amount of 4,7 billion dollars in exchange for assurances from the Algerian authorities about the signing of new contracts with the Russian Federation in the military-industrial sphere.
Year 2007. Mongolia written off debt in 11,1 billion dollars.
Year 2007. Russia forgives Afghanistan the same (about 11 billion dollars) amount of debt.
Year 2008. Russia in exchange for lucrative contracts write off debt in the amount of 4,6 billion dollars Libya. The contracts then had to be quickly folded due to well-known events.
Year 2010. Again Mongolia. Write off a Russian (non-Soviet) debt in the amount of 168 million (not billion) dollars.
Year 2012. Russian Federation writes off a number of African countries debt of about 20 billions of dollars.
Year 2012. Written off 11 billionth (some magic number of debt) DPRK.
Year 2012. Written off debt Kyrgyzstan in the amount of about 0,5 billion dollars.
Year 2013. Restructuring underway Cuban debt, which according to some is about 30 billion dollars.
If you make a summation to identify the total number of debts written off by Russia, it turns out that an amount of about 116 billions of dollars has been written off and restructured. This amount is comparable to the expenditures of local budgets of a good dozen Russian regions. In general, the amount is more than impressive.
We now turn to the list of those states and supranational institutions that have written off the debts of Russia itself. The list in this case is long does not work. What a sin to confess: for the entire existence of such a state as the Russian Federation on the world map, not a single state of this world itself Russia has not written off a penny, a penny, a penny, or a penny...
Even at the very moment when Russia was on its knees, there was no question of writing off the debt. They expected Russia to return both its own debts and the debts collected during the existence of the USSR.
The only help was realized through foreign currency loans, the interest on which sometimes looked more than impressive.
If we talk about the history of lending to Russia from foreign financial organizations, then the beginning of this story was laid in the already insanely distant August 1992 of the year, when we, or rather the current government, were “presented” with a billion billion, so that this government would make the life of an ordinary Russian well fed and financially cloudless ... The credit donor was a few organizations, among which stood out the International Monetary Fund. By the end of the so-called Yeltsin era (December 1999), Russia already owed the IMF about 15,3 billions of dollars. Of course, it is impossible to call this amount very heavy, especially in modern conditions, but one should not forget that the conditions of 1999 and current conditions are, to put it mildly, not quite equivalent.
After the Russian Federation began to reach the level of solvency and repay taken loans, the idea of early repayment of debts to the IMF. 2008 was appointed as the loan repayment year for Russia, but official Moscow persuaded the IMF to accept repayment in advance so as not to pay substantial interest. Representatives of the IMF went to a kind of concessions, abandoned claims for future interest and early repayment of debt from the Russian Federation accepted. These were the first and last (to date) concessions to Russia, which, meanwhile, did not refuse its debt obligations (and as the successor of the Soviet Union, including).
In addition to the IMF at the beginning of zero, Russia also owed the Paris Club of creditors. The permanent members of this club are 19 states, among which are the USA, Canada, Japan, Australia, Great Britain, Germany.
The total amount of debt was about 47 billions of dollars, of which almost 39 billions were debts of the Soviet period. As they say, they spent all the Soviet republics, and repay them to Russia. Well, you can't do anything about it: since the successor is, so the successor is ...
The largest percentage of debt to the members of the Paris Club corresponded to Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States. It should be noted that 1996 signed an agreement on installment payments for 25 years, however, the installment plan looked very peculiar - with interest on individual payment periods. The total amount of interest, which was designated by the permanent members of the Paris Club, was determined in the amount of 19,4 billion dollars, which Russia had to pay up to 2020 year. In order not to overpay on interest, the Russian authorities decided to make an offer to the members of the PAC on early repayment following the example of the agreement with the IMF. However, in the PAC, the officials were not so accommodating as in the IMF, and therefore they agreed to early repayment of debts from the Russian Federation, but only on conditions that the interest accrued right up to the year 2020 will also be paid ... Amazing financial kindness ...
Russia, for obvious reasons, decided to refuse a large lump sum payment that could bleed the budget and, looking around at the "partners" from the Paris Club of Creditors, decided to repay the debt with smaller (although the word "small" is hardly appropriate) payments. As a result, today we (the Russian Federation) owe the international financial organizations 2,2 a billion dollars, of which about 450 million dollars to the very same PAC. As you can see, the debt to the "well-wishers" from the Paris Club is almost repaid.
In addition, at the state level, the Russian Federation today, through the CMEA, owes about 1 billion dollars, and another about 35 billion dollars in foreign bond issues.
Here, the phrase of the Russian Federation “must be in line with the CMEA” stands out. It is worth recalling that such states as Mongolia, Vietnam, Cuba and a number of other countries to which the Russian Federation wrote off debts were included in the CMEA at the time. But in relation to Russia, other ex-CMEA states are not even going to write off the debt ... Where are there - Poland or Hungary will write off a billion - keep your pocket wider ... They, like the countries of the Paris Club, will wait in the wings when Russia presents them with a “debt "On a silver platter. These gentlemen will wait - they will not lose. But Russia, for some reason, does not like to wait for the return of debts - forgives everyone ... They say that, they say, they won't pay it anyway - why wait for the weather at the sea. Neither the “poor” oil Libya and Iraq will pay, nor Vietnam, which was so kind in response to the debt write-off, that even applauded the closure of the base in Cam Ranh ... And on 11, the billions written off the base could function more comfortably for another year.
In general, the fact that we do not know how to wait for the payment of debts from the “partners” is a fact. I would like to believe that acts of unconditional debt cancellation by Russia and non-writing of debts in its relation will not strike a blow to the country's economic and political image. But this is still a trend: you will borrow from Russia - you don’t need to give it anyway ... And if you don’t, you can remember about the “old debt of the USSR”. Perhaps, it will go through, and the Ministry of Finance will pay ...
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