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VLADIMIR, August 17. /TASS/. Spending of funds from the National Wealth Fund should be suspended in the near future, Presidential Aide Andrey Belousov said on Monday.
"Today it’s not that we’ve approached but we’re close to the moment when we should stop," he said, adding that he himself earlier subscribed to the view that funds from the National Wealth Fund should be spent on big projects.
Currently, half of those funds are "blocked" in non-liquid forms, Belousov said, adding that the remaining two trillion (roughly $30 billion) should not be spent. "That two trillion is a relatively low level and of course we need to try to maintain it as a safety cushion," he said.
He also said that one trillion from the fund (worth 4 trillion rubles or $61 bln) has already been spent on structural projects, including those providing logistics in Russia’s Far East.