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Rostec chief: Russia built up weaponry export to $13.4 bln in 2017, in spite of sanctions

According to him, the state defense order has been fulfilled by 98%.

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Putin: Defense Ministry allocates $24 billion for state defense order 2018

SOCHI, May 17. /TASS/. In spite of sanctions, Russia has managed to build up weaponry export in 2017 to $13.4 billion, as compared to $13.1 billion in 2016, Head of the Rostec State Corporation Sergei Chemezov told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday.

"In 2017, the state defense order was fully implemented by the state corporation’s enterprises. In spite of the sanction pressure, weaponry export continued growing and reached $13.4 billion, as compared $13.1 billion in 2016," Chemezov said.

"In general, in Russia, taking into account other participants in military-technical cooperation, we have a volume of more than 15 billion," Chemezov added.

According to him, the state defense order has been fulfilled by 98%.

At the same time, he stressed that by the end of the year a significant increase in the production of civilian industry products was registered.

"According to the results of the year, revenues from civilian products amounted to 548 billion rubles ($8.8 bln), which is 47% more than in 2016. As a result, the share of civilian products in the company's revenues in the year 2017 was 29.1% compared to 25.1% a year earlier ," Chemezov said.

The head of Rostec noted that, despite the fact that the President set the task to achieve the level of civilian industry products by 50% by 2025, the state corporation itself is putting even more ambitious plans - to achieve this level by 2020.

In March, Russian presidential aide for military and technical cooperation Vladimir Kozhin said that Western sanctions complicate sales of Russian armaments but Moscow is ready for work in challenging conditions and exports more military equipment to other countries than earlier planned.

Russia’s plans on exporting armaments remain unchanged, Kozhin stressed.

"This year their amount is about the same, but last year the portfolio of orders did not decline, it is about $45 bln, and new contracts have been signed worth more than $16 bln," he said.

the Presidential aide said that the sanctions have not changed the destination of Russian armaments’ supplies and the Middle East, North Africa and Russia’s traditional partners India and China account for nearly 50% of exports.

Russia is cooperating in military and technical sector with some 100 countries and last year new partners were added to the list of traditional partners, namely Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Qatar and Bahrain. "So, the geography has expanded," Kozhin said.

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