TAXES:

The latest numbers from the tax service certainly don’t explain the bubble of optimism about a new IMF agreement. Tax chief Georgy Boos reported tax collections of 27 billion rubles in December, 20 billion rubles in January and 12.2 billion rubles in February–about US$2.6 billion in three months. That is equal to about 10 percent of budgeted expenditures for 1999.