The government has allocated 2 billion rubles ($68 million) to boost the equity of rocket engine manufacturer NPO Energomash, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Monday.
The state-controlled company will receive an additional 250 million rubles ($8.5 million) to build housing for its employees, Putin said at a meeting on defense spending in the Moscow region town of Khimki.
Putin called on the aerospace industry to raise the quality of its equipment, saying it lags behind its foreign competitors. “This situation must be rectified as soon as possible,” he said. “The industry must sharply increase the quality and reliability of the products it makes.”
The rocket and space industry will have grown by an impressive 18 percent this year, Putin said, compared with the expected overall contraction of the economy by 8.5 percent. He didn’t say why it will have performed so well.
Independent space expert Andrei Ionin said the increase is a result of greater government spending on the industry in recent years. The government is its main customer, he said.
Besides, missiles and satellites take two or three years to produce, meaning that the current output growth comes from precrisis investment, he said.
Deputy Defense Minister Vladimir Popovkin said earlier this year that the military would buy nine strategic missiles and six space vehicles this year.
The government plans to spend 1.175 trillion rubles on state defense contracts next year, up 8.5 percent from this year.
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