Finance Minister on reduction in state expenditures

Russia will be able to save 37.2bn rubles (about $1.19bn at the current exchange rate) in 2005 due to optimizing state expenditures, Finance Minister Alexey Kudrin announced commenting on measures implemented by the government's commission for optimizing state expenditures. The minister also announced that, in particular, they would save 4.3bn rubles (about $137m) on expenditures on national defense and 7.3bn rubles (about $233m) on expenditures on law enforcement agencies, 2.7bn rubles (about $86m) on the agricultural sector next year. The Finance Minister stressed these were preliminary estimates.