Penza, 9 October 2015. PenzaNews. The 1-billion-ruble deficit in local income of the Penza city budget was caused by poor work of the city administration in the relevant field, the acting regional Minister of Finance Lyubov Finogeeva reported during the 30th regular session of the Penza region Legislative Assembly held on Friday, October 9.

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The question about efficiency of the city administration was asked by Georgy Kamnev, regional deputy, first secretary of the CPRF regional committee; a 25% loss of local income is very significant for the budget, he pointed out.

In her turn, Lyubov Finogeeva explained that the information on non-tax income has been checked an analyzed in Penza in an extraordinary audit by an intradepartmental committee of Finance and Economy Ministries and the State Property Department.

“As the analysis of execution of profits for budget shows this drop lies right in the field of non-tax income. This is land plot loans, property loans, sales of land property rights. We already have our first results, and they point towards poor administrative work,” she stressed.

The Penza city administration already reacted to it, with checks of rent agreements and additional agreements already underway with possible court cases to result, she added.

“I believe we will be able to recover a portion of the sum. Of course, for the upcoming year of 2016, it will be unacceptable to let it stay without administering, without timely monitoring of money recovery,” Lyubov Finogeeva said.

According to her, the situation will be somewhat ailed by budgetary loans to local municipalities.

“At the same time, as we face them having difficult municipal debt to the regional budget, and see, on the one hand, low liquidity, and, on the other hand, the fact that many of the loans were not acquired to the will of municipalities themselves […] we have confirmed the list of executing the article of our budget law. We already worked it all out together with the prosecutor’s office and the Department of Justice. It is already out, and through it municipalities are forgiven some loaned money over the norms and another portion is rescheduled until 2020, to ease the debt burden and avoid it peaking in one year and ebbing in the next one,” she clarified.

The acting minister expressed her hope that such measures will help Penza make payments to its subcontractors in construction and repair as soon as possible.

“In other words, speed up liquidity of liquid assets, liven up construction industry and even up the accounts, and restore some balance to the budget,” Lyubov Finogeeva explained.