Russia's Transportation Ministry intends by Oct to complete allocating funds from NWF to purchase foreign aircraft

MOSCOW. July 24 (Interfax) - Russia's Transportation Ministry does not see any problems with allocating funds from the National Wealth Fund (NWF) to airlines in order to purchase foreign aircraft, and the ministry intends to implement the program by the end of September, Deputy Transport Minister Igor Chalik said in a statement.

"We do not see any problems thus far. The questions are organizational," Chalik told reporters on Monday.

Chalik also confirmed that other airlines, except for Aeroflot, have not received the funds yet.

"The process is underway. It is difficult to say when they will receive them, but our task is to complete the program by the end of September, to execute it, shall we say," Chalik said.

Transportation Minister Vitaly Savelyev reported in March that the government had allocated about 300 billion rubles from the NWF in order to purchase aircraft from foreign lessors. Some of the funds, according to him, have already been used by Aeroflot to buy 10 long-haul Boeing 777s.

Aeroflot CEO Sergei Aleksandrovsky in June said that the company was in talks with foreign lessors about "insurance settlements" for another 47 operating leased liners.

Plans to buy out 19 of the 52 available Airbuses were announced earlier in July by the general director of Ural Airlines, Sergei Skuratov. The relevant government agencies of the United States and the European Union issued the appropriate permission to the carrier, and the deal is at the closing stage, he told reporters.