29 Apr 2010 22:43

Russian space industry needs private investments

MOSCOW. April 29 (Interfax-AVN) - Russia's space industry needs private investments, the head of the Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) said on Thursday.

"There exist such programs in the United States. Russia also stands for private capital investment in the space industry and space projects. But we don't, of course, have the scale of private investment that the U.S. has," Anatoly Perminov told reporters in Moscow.

The reason, Perminov said, is that Russian private investors are cautious about industries where investments take several years to start paying back.

Space systems take two to three years to develop and only after that can money that has been put into them begin to pay back, he said.

"Russian investors still have no experience of this and are often afraid to put money into sectors whether they haven't worked yet," Perminov said.