By Darya Korsunskaya MOSCOW, March 16 (Reuters) - Russia has changed this year's budget plans and now expects to spend 3.1 trillion roubles ($49.81 billion) from the country's Reserve Fund, according to Finance Ministry data.
On Monday the government submitted the new budget to the lower house of parliament, which may make some revisions but is unlikely to substantially alter the plans.
Earlier this month the Finance Ministry had said that it expected to use 3.7 trillion roubles from the Reserve Fund this year, itself an upward revision from other recent projections.
The planned 3.1 trillion still represents a major drain on the $77 billion Reserve Fund, the main resource for covering budget shortfalls, implying that two thirds of this fund will need to be used this year and leaving Russia vulnerable to prolonged low oil prices.
The latest revisions left projections for revenues, expenditures and the budget deficit little changed compared with plans revealed earlier this month.
These plans envisage a 2.5 trillion rouble shortfall in revenues compared with the 2015 budget adopted last autumn, which is now being revised to reflect lower oil prices and weaker economic growth.
Whereas the original budget assumed an average oil price of $100 per barrel, the new budget assumes the oil price will average $50.
Russia now envisages a deficit equivalent to 3.7 percent of gross domestic product - up from 0.6 percent in the original budget - with expenditures of 15.2 trillion roubles outstripping revenues of 12.5 trillion roubles.
The projected drain on the Reserve Fund is around 400 billion roubles higher than the projected deficit because of the need to pay off government debts.
Russia plans to raise 1 trillion roubles from domestic bond issues in 2015, insufficient to cover around 1.4 trillion roubles in government liabilities that fall due, including 821 billion roubles in domestic bond redemptions, the data showed.
The Finance Ministry provided the following figures: In trillion roubles Old budget New budget Expenditures 15.513 15.215 Revenues 15.082 12.540 Deficit -0.431 -2.675 Balance pct/GDP -0.6 -3.7 Deficit financing: Reserve Fund 0 3.074 National Wealth Fund 0.02 0.02 Other sources (domestic) 0.348 -0.069 Other sources (foreign) 0.063 -0.350 ($1 = 62.2330 roubles) (Reporting by Darya Korsunskaya, writing by Jason Bush, editing by Elizabeth Piper)