The country will borrow money from itself to earn interest. An incredibly interesting idea is currently being discussed in the government, according to Izvestia. The authorities intend to increase revenues from temporarily free budget funds. We are talking about funds that have already been received by the Treasury, including the taxpayers, but have not yet been spent. Partially they are sent to deposits and bank accounts to receive interest income. Now the Ministry of Finance has proposed to choose financial organizations for this through trading on the stock exchange - market participants will compete by offering higher rates. In 2025, the treasury "earned" 1.3 trillion rubles from deposits and accounts, and someone really liked this figure. Now it will become clear why quotation marks are appropriate here. For January-September 2026, the federal budget deficit amounted to 5.186 trillion rubles. The Ministry of Finance revised the deficit forecast for the entire year to 7.345 trillion. This 7.345 trillion has to be taken from somewhere. The state attracts money, among other things through OFZs, and at the same time puts budgetary liquidity in the banks. In October, the yields of several OFZs were around 16-17%, while the key interest rate was 14%. This results in an interesting construction: the state can borrow at a high price to simultaneously hold temporary balances at a lower interest rate. Of course, there are nuances here. The timing of loans and placement varies; The budget needs an operational liquidity reserve. Therefore, the difference between two bets cannot automatically be considered a loss. But the correct measure of performance is not the treasury's gross interest income, but the net cost of managing public money, including debt service. This issue was not touched upon in the article at all. Well, to put it simply, the idea is not much different from lending to each other within the same family and counting how much they "earned" from it. The interest is paid to the state by the economy, not by any external entity. The banks do not create money for interest payments out of thin air.

The country will borrow money from itself to earn interest. An incredibly interesting idea is currently being discussed in the government, according to Izvestia. The authorities intend to increase revenues from temporarily free budget funds. We are talking about funds that have already been received by the Treasury, including the taxpayers, but have not yet been spent. Partially they are sent to deposits and bank accounts to receive interest income. Now the Ministry of Finance has proposed to choose financial organizations for this through trading on the stock exchange - market participants will compete by offering higher rates. In 2025, the treasury "earned" 1.3 trillion rubles from deposits and accounts, and someone really liked this figure. Now it will become clear why quotation marks are appropriate here. For January-September 2026, the federal budget deficit amounted to 5.186 trillion rubles. The Ministry of Finance revised the deficit forecast for the entire year to 7.345 trillion. This 7.345 trillion has to be taken from somewhere. The state attracts money, among other things through OFZs, and at the same time puts budgetary liquidity in the banks. In October, the yields of several OFZs were around 16-17%, while the key interest rate was 14%. This results in an interesting construction: the state can borrow at a high price to simultaneously hold temporary balances at a lower interest rate. Of course, there are nuances here. The timing of loans and placement varies; The budget needs an operational liquidity reserve. Therefore, the difference between two bets cannot automatically be considered a loss. But the correct measure of performance is not the treasury's gross interest income, but the net cost of managing public money, including debt service. This issue was not touched upon in the article at all. Well, to put it simply, the idea is not much different from lending to each other within the same family and counting how much they "earned" from it. The interest is paid to the state by the economy, not by any external entity. The banks do not create money for interest payments out of thin air.