Latest News

Minister: Russia's budget for 2025 does not include any Gazprom dividend.

The budget plan for Russia does not include a dividend from state-owned energy company Gazprom this year, said Finance Minister Anton Siluanov to reporters on Wednesday.

Gazprom’s directors convene usually in the second half May to recommend dividends ahead of a shareholders meeting in June.

If confirmed, the absence of a Gazprom dividend will only add to the difficulties of the government. It owns just a little over half of its share capital, at a moment when it faces falling oil and gas revenue, high inflation and military expenditure, as well as a budgetary deficit.

Siluanov said that the budget for 2025 does not include any dividends from Gazprom.

Gazprom announced a net income of $14,8 billion for 2024. This is a recovery from a loss in 2023 of nearly $7 billion and raises hopes that dividend payments will resume.

Gazprom's own dividend policy, approved in 2019, states that 50% of adjusted net profits should be allocated to dividends.

The company paid out 297.1 roubles as dividends for 2020, which is a record. More than half of the amount was paid to the state.

Gazprom only paid an interim dividend once since the beginning of the so-called special military operation by Moscow in Ukraine, in February 2022. This was in the autumn of the same year, due to the high gas prices that were in Europe.

Gazprom has not paid out its results for 2021, abandoning a dividend annually for the first since 1998 due to high taxes and spending.

The company, which made a loss of $7 billion last year - its biggest in a quarter century - due to a huge drop in gas exports into Europe, also left investors and state with nothing. Reporting by Darya Corsunskaya, Gleb Bryanski and Oksana Kobieva; Additional reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; Editing by Andrew Osborn

(source: Reuters)