Russia to inject $20 billion into housing

Russia will spend $20.5 billion in state and private investment by 2015 to boost new housing starts by 50 percent, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Thursday.

"We need to achieve significant growth in construction volumes in order to balance supply and demand and guarantee predictability of the housing market preventing price fluctuations," Putin said.

Putin was chairing a government meeting on construction and real estate in the city of Kirov in central Russia. Of the total 620.7 billion rouble investment target, 219.6 is expected to come from non-budget sources.

Real estate prices skyrocketed across the country before the economic crisis, a bubble which threatened to burst when prices for oil, Russia's main export commodity, slumped in autumn 2008.

Source: Reuters