The latest $151,433 figure (£89,800/€113,100), sharply down on the $770,600 (£456,900/€576,200) deficit recorded in 2012, was in spite of a voluntary additional grant of $232,700 (£456,900/€293,800) from the Russian Government.

After it was first disclosed in March 2013, WADA insisted the extra Russian payment - financed by a corresponding cut in Russian contributions to the UNESCO Fund for the Elimination of Doping in Sport - should have "no strings attached".

The grant, which is expected to be made each year, brings to $1.1 million (£650,000/€820,000) the level of the Russian Government's donation to WADA's approximately $29 million (£17.1 million/€21.6 million) annual income.

The agency, which is funded broadly 50 per cent by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and 50 per cent by Governments, would have all but broken even in 2013 had public authorities paid up their entire budgeted contributions.

WADA is asking Executive Committee and Foundation Board members to pay their own way to attend its meetings this year ©AFP/Getty Images



In fact, with public finances in many countries still stretched, WADA received only 98.88 per cent of budgeted public-sector contributions - the lowest amount since 2009, and a shortfall of nearly $148,000 (£87,600/€110,600).

While European countries actually contributed more than budgeted, Asian nations remitted only 95.6 per cent of sums invoiced in 2013, a nearly $119,000 (£70,500/€88,900) shortfall.

With cash reserves dwindling and demands on resources as onerous as ever, the agency has taken the unusual - and, it is to be hoped, temporary - measure of asking Executive Committee and Foundation Board members to meet their own costs in attending WADA meetings in 2014.

With a revised World Anti-Doping Code scheduled to take effect on January 1 2015, however, a degree of relief from the financial squeeze that has been affecting the agency does appear to be at hand.

For one thing, it has been benefiting in 2014 from its first budget increase for three years, albeit just one per cent.

More significantly, it is set to receive a hefty injection of money to fund new research as a result of an IOC initiative unveiled last December, after the IOC Executive Board's ground-breaking brainstorming seminar in Montreux.

While the exact amount of this injection is unlikely to become clear before a WADA Foundation Board meeting in Paris in November, insidethegames understands that a figure of up to $12 million (£7.1 million/€8.9 million) may be in prospect, split equally between the IOC and a number of Governments, and possibly spread over more than one year.