Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Monday that the output of the national space industry in 2009 will increase by about 18%.

Despite difficulties caused by the global financial crisis, "financing of the space industry has always been and will remain sufficient," Putin said at a meeting on the development of defense-related industries.

"We expect space industry production growth in 2009 at about 18%," he said, adding that overall production growth in the defense industry would increase by up to 3.8%.

The prime minister also noted that the quality of production needs improvement.

"Despite all our efforts, many Russian-made spacecraft are not as advanced as their foreign equivalents... and the R&D work takes longer than planned," Putin said.

He urged improvements to production efficiency, and said priority projects must be tackled, including the Angara-family carrier rockets and the development of new communications, navigation and remote Earth sensing spacecraft.

Putin reiterated that in the past two years Russia's space industry enterprises have received and spent over 21 billion rubles ($609 million), and that half of those funds were allocated for technical upgrading of production facilities.

KHIMKI (Moscow Region), November 30 (RIA Novosti)