"The matter of natural resources heavily feeding the national budget and the need to increase the supply of raw materials in order to avoid problems in the future was repeatedly raised", the minister said.
He said that his ministry has drawn up a programme for enhancing the supply, "calculated the balance for every primary material and prepared two scenarios".
Trutnev stressed that "Russia today is spending eight times less from profits arriving from the use of minerals to replenish their base than other countries".
He informed the president of one scenario, relying on what is at hand and calculated from the current budget capability.
"We believe that we can preserve the resources at the 2005 level but, we cannot study the shelf, increase the activity of reserves or, in other words, we cannot make them more paying and cannot diminish the investors' risks in the further development of large deposits", Trutnev explained the gist of the scenario.
"We propose an increase" in the budgetary allocations for the upkeep of raw materials and boosting their supply, the minister said.
He thinks that Russia is spending too little on these ends - 11 million roubles (1 dollar equals 28.75 roubles) - in comparison with "the profits arriving from the use of natural resources - 350 billion roubles annually only as tax on their extraction".
"We propose doubling the budgetary expenses starting in 2005", Trutnev said.
In his opinion, such expenses are "bearable for the budget and a guarantee that there will be no slump in the budgetary revenue from the use of raw materials".
