Crimean authorities: Russia will have to subsidize Crimea for the next 10 years
The Crimea will not be denied subsidies from the budget of neighboring Russia within the next ten years, as reported by Irina Kiviko, head of the Kremlin-controlled finance ministry of the peninsula.
According to her, the budget of the Crimea might not need any subsidies by 2028.
"I think that this will happen when the bridges are built, when we have a railway, when industry begins to develop. Probably, we will need 10 years," Russian agency TASS quotes Kiviko as saying.
According to the draft law on the budget for 2018 and the planning period 2019-2020, the volume of gratuitous transfer of funds from the Russian budget to the Crimea in 2018 will increased by more than 20% compared to 2017. The increase will amount to 131.4 billion rubles or about $2.2 billion.
In 2017, direct subsidies to the Crimea from the budget of neighboring Russia amounted to just over 37 billion rubles or about $626 million. Until 2020, Moscow plans to spend more than 160 billion rubles ($2.7 billion) per year as part of the federal targeted program of social and economic development of the Crimea and Sevastopol.