Finance

Home page

Finance

Russia puts off census until 2013

18 September 2009 10:41 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA-Economics. A Russian national census is postponed from 2010 to 2013 over the financial crisis, deputy chief of the Federal State Statistics Service Alexander Surinov said in an interview with the Vesti news TV channel on Friday.
â€œA national census initially scheduled for 2010 will most likely be postponed, according to the decision of the Russian president, and we are preparing all documents for 2013,â€ Surinov said. â€œThe financial crisis is the only reason for the postponement of the census. The budget has not enough money, and this is probably the main cause. At least, the government has written about it in its letter,â€ he added.
Speaking on the monetary funds already spent for the preparations to a census in 2010, Surinov noted that it could not be claimed that the money was â€˜wastedâ€™. â€œWe have spent about two billion roubles from planned 18 billions. A greater part of the sum, that is to say 10 billion roubles or about 80% should be spent for the salary to the hired personnel next year,â€ Surinov said. â€œWe have developed a questionnaire, census techniques, developed almost the whole software, trained personnel, and bought some equipment. This will be certainly used,â€ he added.
â€œThe information and instructive work happened to be not quite justified, therefore it will be necessary to adjust the program,â€ Surinov believes. â€œCertainly, something was wasted. But we will exert maximum effort to justify (already spent) the monetary funds,â€ the official said.