Duma Defense Committee head: Russian military expenditures to top 3 trillion rubles in 2015
MOSCOW. Oct 16 (Interfax-AVN) - The 2015 draft budget allots a record sum of 3.286.8 trillion rubles for national defense, which is 4.2% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), State Duma Defense Committee Chairman Admiral Vladimir Komoyedov told Interfax-AVN on Thursday.
"Our committee has presented its opinion on the draft federal budget law for 2015 and the projected period of 2016-2017 submitted by the government to the State Duma. The national defense section of the draft law allots 3.286.8 trillion rubles in 2015, which is more than the 812.16 billion rubles allotted in 2014. The expenditures will stand at 3.113.24 trillion rubles in 2016 and 3.237.82 trillion rubles in 2017," Komoyedov said.
National defense expenditures will amount to 4.2% of GDP in 2015, 3.7% in 2016 and 3.6% in 2017. "This is much larger than the 2014 parameters in which [defense expenditures] amounted to 3.4% of GDP; the indicator stood at 3.2% in 2013 and 3.0% in 2012," the admiral said.
Most Russian Defense Ministry expenditures included in the national defense section will cover key areas of the activity of the armed forces, including the ongoing shift to brand new weapons, military and special-purpose hardware, social security for servicemen and some other tasks, Komoyedov said.
The Russian armed forces sub-section holds the main place in the structure of the expenditures, he said, adding that from 81.2% to 86.5% of total expenditures will fall on that sub-section in 2015 and the next two years.
"At the same time, the open part of expenditures on the armed forces' operations is planned at only 806.86 billion rubles in 2015, which is 60.5 billion rubles less than in 2014 (867.37 billion rubles), and 843.7 billion rubles and 770.2 billion rubles in 2016 and 2017, respectively," the admiral said.
He added that the expenditures on servicemen's salaries had been planned at 440.1 billion rubles, 483.6 billion rubles and 435.2 billion rubles in 2015, 2016, 2017, respectively.
The committee noted that a number of problems should be taken into consideration in the discussion of the draft budget law, Komoyedov said. "For instance, it is necessary to assign budget funds for combat service support, including clothing for servicemen. A total of 29.3 billion rubles will be assigned for this purpose in 2015, 23.2 billion rubles in 2016 and 31.3 billion rubles in 2017, alongside social protection of servicemen, including the resumed free transportation of servicemen and their families to a vacation resort and back once a year, and a number of other matters," Komoyedov said.
