Soviet State Bank Is Broke, Chairman Says

The Soviet state bank has run out of money, and the massive machine of Soviet government could grind to a halt unless Parliament unblocks new budget allotments, the bank’s chairman asserted Friday.

Victor V. Gerashchenko, chairman of Gosbank, told Soviet television that his staff had gathered to calculate how much was left in the treasury, and “we came to the conclusion that . . . there was no money left in the bank.”

“In this connection, we had to stop payments this morning,” he said, referring to the bank’s payment of the government’s operating costs.

The Soviet budget crisis resembles the relatively common crunches that hit the United States when Congress balks at approving the budget and puts the government in danger of running out of bill-paying money. But it also reflects the Soviet central government’s increasingly dangerous inability to marshal enough support from the wayward republics to continue its own existence--even though the republics have agreed in principle to maintain it.

The Supreme Soviet’s resistance to approving the budget bailout--financed, in effect, by simply printing more rubles and thus further fueling runaway inflation--also highlights the growing tendency among the nation’s lawmakers to assert themselves, despite pressure from presidents and government bureaucrats.

With the Soviet government’s budget deficit expected to total at least 200 billion rubles this year ($360 billion at the official rate of exchange), Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s central government tried this week to win parliamentary approval for a state loan of 90.5 billion rubles.

But lawmakers, led by Russian Federation deputies who objected that Russia would have to finance about 80% of the loan, blocked the request. Further legislative action has been postponed until early next week.

Gerashchenko, clearly fuming over what he considers parliamentary gamesmanship, accused lawmakers of intentionally “torpedoing an important decision.”

“For some reason, several deputies representing the Russian Federation . . . have taken a stand of political maneuvering, marking time and avoiding decision-making,” he said.

But Russian Federation deputies were, in fact, following the lead of their president, Boris N. Yeltsin, in refusing to finance central Soviet government operations without a commensurate degree of control. Complaining that central Soviet government financial policies have been leading Russia to ruin, Yeltsin has attempted to take over the central state bank--an ambition his administration still holds--and withheld a large chunk of the taxes Russia was supposed to contribute to the central government.

This week, the Yeltsin administration announced that it was taking over Soviet Foreign Ministry properties, including embassies and the ministry’s Gothic skyscraper in central Moscow, because the central government can no longer support their operations.

Russian Television’s nightly news show, Vesti, commented, “Some people think that because of humanitarian considerations, Russia should pay for the center’s expenses--after all, there are people who may not be paid because the money has run out.”

But the consensus, Vesti said, is that “the center wants to preserve a maximum of authority and deepen inflation. Such approaches endanger the success of our reforms.”

The Soviet Finance Ministry declared on Friday that because government coffers were empty, state employees in health care, culture and education would not receive their salaries. The salary cutoff would affect millions of people. Pensions, students’ stipends and funding for the army could also be cut off, according to the Russian Information Agency.

In another sign of the Soviet Union’s deepening financial crisis, officials at the Soviet Bank for Foreign Trade, known as Vneshekonombank, said that, if it does not receive injections of foreign currency within the next few days it could teeter into bankruptcy.

In recent weeks, this bank has repeatedly run out of cash for businessmen and other foreigners--as well as Soviet citizens--who earn hard currency and who make up its clientele.

For decades, the ruble’s exchange rate has been artificially set by the Soviet government, making it non-convertible on world markets. In a move toward changing that, Gosbank said on Friday that it would allow Soviet banks beginning next week to set their own rate for buying foreign currency from tourists and selling it to Soviet citizens going abroad.

The two other Gosbank rates, the official rate of 0.57 kopecks to the dollar used for some accounting calculations, and the commercial rate of 1.71 rubles to the dollar used for many foreign trade transactions, will remain the same.