MOSCOW, June 22 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's budget does not include enough spending on investment for 2007 and in the medium term, the economic development and trade minister said Thursday.
"The real shortage of allocations for investment purposes in 2007 is over 100 billion rubles [$3.7 billion]," German Gref told a Cabinet meeting to consider the draft budget.
Gref said the problem should be resolved jointly with the Finance Ministry during consideration of the budget. He said budgetary investment spending in 2008 would drop by 0.5 percentage points of GDP and by another percentage point in 2009, while current budgetary spending would rise by one percentage point in 2008-2009.
In the medium term Gref said budget spending should be reduced or investment spending reconsidered, including under current obligations.
