VLADIMIR PUTIN wants to get Russia’s economy growing again after the pandemic with a burst of spending. His government is working overtime to find the money to pay for it.

Just what the Russian leader has in mind is being kept secret until his annual address to the nation April 21. But officials led by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin are already considering several possible ways to come up with the cash, Bloomberg News quoted sources familiar with the deliberations. Options include tapping the government’s US$182 billion rainy-day fund, easing spending restrictions under a self-imposed fiscal rule, diverting money from other projects and raising taxes, the report said.

Though Russia’s economy didn’t shrink as much as many others during the pandemic last year, the Kremlin is eager to speed up the recovery.

The new program is likely to include a combination of infrastructure spending to boost investment and welfare and other benefits to help compensate the slump in incomes, officials said. Putin has already ordered the government to select projects ranging from high-speed rail to bridges and ports to get as much as 1 trillion rubles (US$13 billion) from the wealth fund starting this year. How much money the Kremlin will spend remains the subject of heated debate, the report said.

The central bank has already warned that too much new spending could force it to accelerate interest-rate increases as inflation surges above target.

For Mishustin, who got the prime minister post just a few months before the pandemic hit, the latest effort is a chance to get back to the economic-development focus he’d hoped to make a priority. Known for using computer technology to overhaul the bureaucracy at his previous job as chief of the tax service, Mishustin is also pushing for high-tech improvements this time.(SD-Agencies)