Putin: We cutting budget spending on virtually all power agencies but not state defense contracts
MOSCOW. April 14 (Interfax) - President Vladimir Putin has announced that state defense contracts in Russia will not be reduced.
"The State Defense Contract is not being reduced. We are in fact reducing budget spending on the Defense Ministry and practically all law enforcement agencies. Yes, we are doing that given well-known budget restrictions. And this is an absolutely natural thing in the present conditions," he said during a Q&A session on Thursday.
"We should bridle the appetites of the power agencies the same as we are bridling the appetites of civilian agencies," he said.
"The effectiveness of using budget resources should be increased. But, I want to stress that these restrictions are related to the current operations, not the State Defense Contract," the president said.
"The State Defense Contract should be, and will be, carried out in full," Putin said.
He stressed that orders and workload for defense companies will peak in 2017, "beyond which point it will go down as our Armed Forces continue being equipped with brand new systems whose proportion must increase to 70%. And of course, there will be the question of what to load [the defense companies] with further," the Russian president said.
"This is what we, and not just we, but you (defense companies) as well, should think about right now. We need to think about repurposing our companies," Putin said.
