Decrease in arms export to India, China: Russia

Moscow, Feb 20: First Deputy Prime Minister, in charge of defenceindustry, Sergei Ivanov, today expressed concern over the decreasingshare of Russian arms exports to India and China.

''The main buyers of Russian arms are India and China, but theirshare in Russia's overall arms exports is continuing to decrease,''Interfax news agency quoted Ivanov as saying at a meeting of the StateCouncil Presidium in Volgograd.

He was referring to successful diversification of exports of arms and military hardware.

''Diversification has been observed in this segment of exports.

Arms exports have been growing, but the share of key buyers(India, China), has been decreasing, which means that our market hasbeen expanding,'' he said.

''All contracts for 2006 were finalised recently. Updated reportsindicate that Russian arms exports amounted to 6.4 billion dollars in2006, and our target for 2007 is 7.5 billion dollars,'' Mr Ivanov said,adding the share of exported spare parts and services had increasedsignificantly (ten-times over the last four years).

India and China have remained leading buyers of Russian armaments,accounting for about 80 per cent of the country's total weaponsexports.

However, the country has recently been seeking to expand itspresence on the global arms markets, especially, in Latin America andthe West Asia.

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