The federal program for the reform of Russia's defense industry was adopted in 2006 to build additional industrial capacity to meet growing demand of the state defense procurement order for 2007-2015 and to ensure the progress of military-technical cooperation with foreign countries.
"When we adopted the federal program, we assumed that a significant part of the financing would originate from non-budgetary sources, or, specifically, from defense enterprises," Sergei Ivanov said at a meeting of the Military-Industrial Commission.
"This sum totals 201 billion rubles, or 40% of the funding intended for the program," he said.
Ivanov, who has been recently entrusted with the important task of supervising the country's defense industry, said that the federal program is also intended to create a more efficient structure of the national defense industry that would focus on integration within shipbuilding, aerospace and aircraft-manufacturing sectors.
He also said that Russia's defense companies could become profitable by 2010 when they consolidated profits from fulfilling the current state defense orders.
"That is why to ensure a sustainable development of [Russia's] defense industry we must expand state support of the industry and implement a system of state guarantees," Ivanov said.
Ivanov, who heads the Military-Industrial Commission, earlier said that the defense industry had demonstrated an average production growth rate of 7% in the last five years, while overall industrial production grew by only 4.5% during the same period.
In addition, the defense industry accounts for 70% of all scientific and research output in the country, and employs more than 50% of all researchers, he said.
