By IANS/RIA Novosti,
Moscow : Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin has said the implementation of the country’s ambitious arms procurement programme will bring drastic changes by 2020.
“By 2020, the moment of the weapons programme implementation, we will be living in a quite another country. In the country, which will surely get off the oil and gas needle, in the country which will have new modern plants, in the country, where the cult of an engineer and constructor will be created,” said Rogozin, who is in charge of the defence industry.
“We will turn the tide, this will be an industrial power,” he said.
Russia’s 2011-2020 arms procurement programme stipulates the upgrade of up to 11 percent of military equipment annually and will allow the country to increase the share of modern weaponry in the armed forces to 70 percent by 2020.
Russia allocated 908 billion rubles (about $30 billion) on state defence order spending in 2012.
The sharp increase in spending was necessary to boost R&D and put new weaponry into mass production, Rogozin said.