Moscow, 15 August 2005. The management of OAO "Khabarovskenergo" and the Command of troops unit 31711 held a meeting today to discuss the ways to ensure electricity payments by the units of the Defence Ministry located in the Khabarovsk Kray.

The participants of the meeting noted that, as of 15 August 2005, the Air Force and Air Defence units had virtually no allocations from the budgets to pay their current electricity bills to OAO "Khabarovskenergo".

Thus, the budgetary appropriations approved at the time when the contract was made with OAO "Khabarovskenergo" to supply power to the facilities of the Defence Ministry of Russia for year 2005 had been used up by 10 July 2005. The budgetary appropriations were enough to pay a mere 40% of the anticipated energy consumption of the unit in question. The deficit of budgetary funds needed to pay for the electricity consumed by the unit in 2005 may reach RUB130 million.

As a result of the meeting, the unit command guaranteed that an additional RUB22 million will be allocated in the budget by 1 September 2005. OAO "Khabarovskenergo" said that they would not restrict power supply to the Air Force and the Air Defence facilities until that time.

As a result of the joint effort to address the problems of payment of electricity bills by troop units, an additional RUB20 million in budgetary funds was allocated, which should be sufficient to pay for the electricity consumed by the troops in the Khabarovsk Kray until August 1^st.

Despite the agreements reached by the parties, the situation, which virtually spells absence of budgetary allocations to ensure payment of electricity bills by the Defence Ministry units, calls for immediate action.