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Business Strips Science of Govt Appropriations
The business community has actually refused to co-fund state investments in research and development, Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov announced yesterday. Key administrators of state appropriations for R&D, Education and Science Minister Andrei Fursenko and Industry and Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko, promptly suggested freezing the government’s money until the business resumes its financial backing for R&D.
Russia’s Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov raised the R&D investment problem yesterday, when visiting Salut aircraft engine maker. The aggregate budget of federal target programs in engineering nears 200 billion rubles. Off-the-budget sources were expected to funnel as much. “But off-budget funds are being provided badly and slowly,” Zubkov said.
The problem of R&D co-funding is acute not only for federal target programs elaborated for engineering but extends to the entire program of state investments, the budget financing of which reached 1 trillion rubles in 2007. Each federal target program includes the R&D costs.
According to Industry and Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko, all R&D contracts concluded with enterprises specify co-funding by the enterprise and by the business. The ratio of budget-to-off-budget financing is one-for-one or the amount of off-budget money exceeds budget appropriations, Khristenko pointed out, making clear the extent of the problem.
Education and Science Minister Andrei Fursenko offered the most radical solution. With no private funding available, R&D should be terminated under the terms of the contract, the minister said, pointing out that the budget funds would be injected provided the business co-funded the projects.
Khristenko supported the idea, but offered to decide on shelving financial backing by results of the year.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Nov. 20, 2007
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