MOSCOW, October 13 (AVN) - The expanding of the 2001 budget's national defence article in the case of the R&D works, armament and materiel purchases at least at RUR40bn (USD1.43bn) should be done not out of additional budget revenues, but out of redistributing of other article's funds, Yuri Maslyukov, chairman of the State Duma industry, building and knowledge-intensive technologies committee told the Military News Agency.
According to him, this is connected most of all with the fact that the armament programme the government is basing on while forming the state defence order cannot be higher than the control budget figures as it is. And that is unlike the payment for the services of the RAO EES, Russia's unified energy grids, spending on purchases of fuels and lubricants, food, outwear, that can be done as soon as additional revenue is accumulated. Apart from that the defence industry relies much on the defence funds and as mush as 40 percent of the funds should be allocated in February - March 2001. But the state could see whether it has additional income only in mid-2001.
And the Finance Ministry is proposing to increase the defence spending for the redistributing of budget funds for just RUR12bn (USD429m) and another RUR10bn (USD357.5m) to allocate from additional revenues. The committee as well as the inner faction activity will be strictly against that turn of events, Maslyukov noted.