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- "Already in October, we plan to conduct a pilot on certain types of payments with a digital ruble."
"Already in October, we plan to conduct a pilot on certain types of payments with a digital ruble."
The Federal Treasury plans to launch a digital ruble pilot in October 2025 and extend it to the entire budget system by 2027. Roman Artyukhin, its head, told Izvestia about this in an exclusive interview at SPIEF 2025. According to him, the new mechanism will increase transparency not only within the treasury system, but also in targeted payments outside it, ensuring more complete control over the movement of funds. In addition, the service soon plans to introduce a cost monitoring system within the framework of the state defense order and launch state maintenance without commission. How the Treasury is going to attract 1.4 trillion from investments and why they see less and less sense in physical checks — in an interview with Roman Artyukhin to Izvestia.
"The digital ruble makes it possible to better track financial flows"
— The launch of the digital ruble is planned next year. When can this system be implemented for use in the public sector?
— The digital ruble is a new and interesting tool for making budget payments. The Minister of Finance has set us a task: to ensure equal conditions for the use of this form of national currency along with traditional means of payment.
Together with the Central Bank, we have started to solve this problem. First of all, it is necessary to establish the possibility for the treasury to open a digital wallet on the regulator's platform. The relevant bill is currently being considered in the State Duma. This stage will allow us to become a full participant in this kind of relationship.
I would like to emphasize that digital wallets are not supposed to be opened for recipients of budget funds. The system of treasury and personal accounts remains unchanged. At the same time, as technology develops, it will be possible to make payments to the state using the digital ruble, and the Treasury will reflect them on the accounts of administrators of budget money.
As early as October 2025, we plan to conduct a pilot on certain types of payments with a digital ruble. In 2026, it is planned to start using it for operations only within the framework of the federal treasury. And from July 1, 2027, to expand its application to all levels of the budget system.
— What advantages and risks do you see in this process?
— Of course, there are more advantages. We are talking not only about tracking payments within the treasury system — we already have it secured — but also about monitoring funds beyond its borders. When targeted payments are made to recipient accounts, the digital ruble allows for better tracking of financial flows.
As for the risks, they are primarily related to the volume of transactions. We need to understand how large the scale of such payments will be and how it will affect the existing treasury infrastructure. We are already accumulating the liquidity of all budget levels in a single treasury account and effectively managing it. Therefore, we will closely monitor the development of the payment market and adapt the system as needed.
"This year, we have redistributed part of the funds from the medium-term segment to long-term instruments"
— Treasury is an active participant in the financial market. In 2024, it was possible to earn more than 1 trillion rubles by managing temporarily available funds. What are your expectations for profitability this year and in which instruments are you mainly planning to invest money?
— This is really a very important area of work for us. The Treasury is actually the third or fourth largest revenue administrator of the federal budget. Moreover, we are talking not only about the income of the Russian Federation itself, but also of its subjects: we charge interest on the remaining funds in the accounts of the regions hosted by us.
The Finance Minister pays close attention to this topic — we have twice reported to Anton Germanovich Siluanov on the interim results. For both him and me, this is a kind of indicator of the effectiveness of our work.
Initially, this year we planned to receive income from investments in the amount of 900 billion rubles. However, the updated version of the budget has already included 1.4 trillion. The instruments in which we place funds have remained the same. These are three baskets: short-term, medium-term and long-term investments. This year, we have redistributed part of the funds from the medium—term segment (from seven to 30 days) to long-term instruments - deposits and others.
This solution has significantly improved the result. The average yield we are currently receiving is RUONIA + 0.5 percentage points. This is a very good result for short-term money liquidity management. Therefore, we are confident that we will successfully complete the tasks set by the Minister of Finance.
— So the bet is on long-term investments?
— We have short money. Treasury funds live within the same budget year, as this is how the financial plan is adjusted. There are fluctuations in liquidity within the year — surpluses appear, then there are periods when money needs to be promptly withdrawn and spent.
I would like to note that the administrators of the funds strictly adhere to the cash plan. We know the schedule of expenses in advance — for a week, a month in advance. And the agencies are well aware that the money they spend needs to be properly planned.
Therefore, within a short distance, we have a clear understanding of the volume of free liquidity. Everything that goes beyond these limits is maximally channeled into instruments for a period of more than 30 days, and this has a tangible effect on additional revenues for the federal budget.
"Now we are forming a cost monitoring system within the framework of the state defense order"
— In 2023, there was big news that the Treasury Department was checking the expenses of the Ministry of Defense for a special military operation. Have any other similar checks been carried out since then and what have they shown?
— For us, it is not so much the verification itself that is important, as the creation of a sustainable mechanism for transparency and traceability of such expenses. In December 2024, amendments were made to the law on the state defense order, and from that moment on, the Treasury became a full participant in this area.
We are currently developing a cost monitoring system within the framework of the state defense order. Its parameters are standard: accounts receivable, deadlines for concluding contracts and making payments. All this gives the management a more complete understanding of all the processes.
The Ministry of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Grigorenko aim us to manage not only current expenses, but also future ones through the development of a risk management system. Digitalization makes it possible not only to track what is happening now, but also to predict tomorrow. This is very important, among other things, for liquidity planning — we need to understand in advance what obligations will be assumed, when they will require payment and how this will affect the cash plan.
Thus, the legal and information environment has been built within the framework of the law, ensuring the necessary level of transparency and control over all stages of expenditures in the state defense order.
"You know, we count every penny"
— It is planned to launch state-owned equipping this year. When can this happen and why is this direction so important?
— We actively participate in the system of budget payments. State accounting is a mechanism for accepting non—cash payments, primarily in public sector institutions: sanatoriums, polyclinics, healthcare and educational institutions. Citizens are used to convenient card payments in stores, but there has been no such opportunity in the public sector for a long time.
We are now switching to a new model. We conclude agreements with the subjects of the Russian Federation — for example, at the SPIEF site we will sign an agreement with St. Petersburg. We have already reached an agreement with Moscow. This allows you to deploy an infrastructure that provides contactless payment for services in social institutions.
It is important that, unlike commercial banks, we, as a state accounting operator, do not charge a commission for transactions. This is a small but significant saving for budgets. And we, you know, count every penny.
— How much will you be able to save approximately?
— According to our calculations, savings due to state accounting can amount to at least 1 billion rubles, based on the volume of cash turnover in institutions that will begin to connect to the system.
"In fact, digitalization in the public sector is something that we have been doing for a long time"
— This year, for the first time, the Treasury conducted a fully electronic audit of the Russian Export Center (REC). How did this system work? What are its advantages and does it require improvement?
— Thanks to the REC, we have come to understand that we need not so much standard checks as digital monitoring, which allows us to highlight risks in advance.
We have developed a detailed risk matrix and determined exactly how they can manifest themselves in information systems. The essence of the approach is that we carry out control remotely, without field events, in monitoring mode. So far, this mechanism has not been legally fixed.
As a result of the audit, we issued an official conclusion to the REC for the first time: the funds were used for their intended purpose, the deadlines were met, and the requirements of regulatory documents were met. And, importantly, no physical monitoring was needed — monitoring has already provided an exhaustive picture.
We are confident that this model has a future. With appropriate legislative support, it will be scaled up to other control facilities.
— You noted that this is not a one-time check, but a constant monitoring. If it is implemented on a large scale, will there be enough resources?
— Here we proceed from the level of digital development of the entire public administration system. In general, the very concept of "digitalization" came from accounting and finance, because we are dealing with numbers.
In fact, digitalization in the public sector is something that we have been doing for a long time: accounting, payments, calculations. All this has been in electronic form for a long time, but the data is still scattered across different information systems.
When organizations already have a developed digital environment, connecting to them and creating data storefronts are minimal costs. The Federal Tax Service has followed this path and has become a good example for us. This is much cheaper than paper checks or copying documents.
But this approach requires a mature internal control system. Only if it is available, it is possible to implement digital — according to agreed models and end-to-end storefronts, through which we see exactly how budget funds are used.
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