Officials discussed the option at a March 21 meeting led by Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak, the people said, asking not to be identified as the information isn’t public. Russia’s ministries of economy, finance and regional development have an April 15 deadline to present a plan for the gambling project with spending and revenue estimates, the people said.
Russia is seeking to make Crimea less reliant on the state budget. The region may run a fiscal deficit of about us$ 1.5 billion this year, which Russia plans to fully cover, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said last week in an interview on state television. Russia had a budget surplus of us$ 856.8 million, or 0.3 percent of economic output, in the first two months of 2014, according to Finance Ministry data.