Politicians and lobbyists have declared open season on the government's draft budget for 2000, threatening to sink the IMF-friendly document with barrels of election-year pork.

Lawmakers may find the government's current proposal the most painless package they can sell to the International Monetary Fund and other creditors, on whom they are counting for $5.9 billion, or about 25 percent of spending.

But the government's formula for satisfying IMF demands relies heavily on shaky assumptions and politically unpopular proposals, and if Russia's oil and gas tycoons get their way, it may collapse altogether.

"This is basically another tight budget for Russia," said Peter Westin, an economist at the Russian-European Center for Economic Policy. "I think there will be some quarrels about it."

More than 10 percent of revenues for next year are currently intended to come from new or increased taxes on gas and oil exports. The 5 euro-per-ton-tax ($5.13) on oil exports is to be raised to 7.5 euros ($7.84) a ton, and a new tax on gas exports is proposed at the rate of 3 euros ($3.13) per 1,000 cubic meters. Such proposals have already caused a scandal in the industry.

Former Prime Minster Yevgeny Primakov tried to levy a similar gas tax - which had been on the books until 1996 - but natural gas giant Gazprom had it removed "within hours" of the budget's introduction to the Duma, according to Matthew Sagers, who follows the Russian energy sector for the American think tank PlanEcon. He doubts that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will be more successful.

"Each government has been successively weaker," Sagers said. "This government will be even weaker than [former Prime Minister Sergei] Stepashin's, just as Stepashin's was weaker than Primakov's."

The government has already hinted that it may also back down on the oil tax.

"Under certain circumstances, export duties on oil may go back to 5 euros per ton," Finance Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said.

The industry is already preparing its attack.

"At the upcoming hearings in the State Duma [lower house of parliament], the oil companies will argue that oil excises are too high and will probably achieve a small reduction," said a member of oil company LUKoil's board of directors, who asked that his name be withheld.

But he added the companies are willing to be reasonable and do not expect to reduce tariffs by more than 0.5 euros.

"It is obvious that the government has no way of boosting revenues but to increase export duties," the board member said. "Besides, the oil tycoons acknowledge the necessity to preserve the present fragile stability until the elections."

An unspecified amount of budget money is also supposed to come from privatizations of LUKoil, Slavneft, Rosneft and others, although that idea is most likely fantasy - window dressing intended to please the IMF - Sagers said.

"There's no way those companies are going to be sold," he said. "I don't think that anyone would be willing to buy it. But the IMF is pushing it, so they put it in the budget."

Even tougher issues are left unresolved, particularly how the state Agency for Restructuring Crediting Organizations (ARCO) - set up to restructure Russia's ruined banks - will be funded. The draft budget authorizes the agency to collect the liabilities of all faltering banks, estimated to total 35 billion to 37 billion rubles. But the document does not give ARCO the capital it needs to do that.

"It is not clear how ARCO will deal with the problem," said Dmitry Ignatiev, head of the Tax Ministry's department for credit organizations. "The task will require us to adopt a number of government resolutions."

The government also proposes to increase the budget's operational surplus and cut the overall deficit while increasing spending and revenues in rubles. In dollar terms, however, spending will fall from last year.

Analysts question the fact that budget writers have based many of their plans on taxes that may not appear. They are are also wary of a number of economic assumptions.

In particular, the government expects 1.5 percent GDP growth for the year, while most liberal estimates strain to top 1 percent, Westin said. The government even says its own estimate is actually pessimistic, according to Sergei Generalov, director of the Strategic Research Institute and a former minister of fuel and energy. Meanwhile, the assumption of 305 million tons of oil production seems optimistic, Generalov said.

A proposed 57 percent increase in ruble taxes translates to only 5.7 percent in dollar terms (the only terms that really matter to Russia's high-powered lobbies). While political incumbents can sell a 40 percent increase in ruble spending to voters, they can simultaneously pitch a 6.2 percent cut in dollar spending to the IMF. Either way, the deficit falls, by 43 percent in rubles or 62 percent in dollars.

Still, such proposals are essential if the government wants the IMF to ignore other missteps.

The IMF and Western governments have particularly opposed any export duties - which Moscow views as the only sure way to collect taxes - but have looked the other way as long as Russia talks tough on taxes and fiscal stability, Sagers said.

No one expects the draft budget's final passage until near the end of the year at best. When Duma debates begin in earnest, deputies may find that little can actually be changed, Westin said. Government bonds, once the favorite, uncontroversial choice for revenues, are no longer an option, necessitating tax hikes. And with elections coming up, few are likely to advocate spending cuts, he said.

Gerard Belanger, head of the IMF's Moscow mission, has already tentatively approved the draft budget, although he also has stated reservations about some of the government's assumptions.

But whatever deputies decide now, politicians know that formal budgets on paper often look very different from the real picture.

"You pass one budget," Westin said, "and then there are several revisions over the year. You know how it goes."

(Ekaterina Larina contributed

to this report.)