Russia's 2025 budget does not assume receipt of any Gazprom dividend, minister says

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's budget planning does not assume that state-owned energy giant Gazprom will pay out a dividend this year, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov told reporters on Wednesday.

Gazprom's directors usually convene in the second half of May to recommend a dividend ahead of a shareholder meeting in June.

The absence of a dividend, if confirmed, will add to the problems of the government, which owns just over half of Gazprom's share capital at a time when it is confronting falling oil and gas revenues, high inflation, high military spending and a budget deficit.

"We do not plan any dividend income from Gazprom in the 2025 budget," said Siluanov, the finance minister.

Gazprom on Friday posted net income of $14.8 billion for 2024, recovering from a loss of almost $7 billion in 2023 and raising hopes of a resumption in dividend payouts.

According to its own dividend policy approved in 2019, Gazprom should allocate 50% of its adjusted net profit for a dividend payout.

It paid out 297.1 billion roubles in dividends on 2020 results, a record high, of which more than half was received by the state.

Since the start of what Moscow calls its special military operation in Ukraine in February 2022, Gazprom has only once paid out an interim dividend - in autumn of that year, thanks to rising earnings from high gas prices in Europe at the time.

Gazprom did not pay out on its 2021 results, ditching an annual dividend for the first time since 1998, because of high taxes and spending.

After making a loss of almost $7 billion in 2023 - its first annual loss for about a quarter of a century on the back of a massive fall in gas exports to Europe - the company also left investors and the state empty-handed last year.

(Reporting by Darya Korsunskaya and Gleb Bryanski; additional reporting by Oksana Kobzeva; writing by Vladimir Soldatkin; Editing by Andrew Osborn)