Russia public TV gets bailout
September 20, 2013
By Chris Forrester
Russia’s public TV broadcaster OTR is to benefit from a soft loan from Vnesheconombank (VEB) amounting to 250 million Roubles (about $8m).
VEB head Vladimir Dmitriyev says: “We have also considered several projects from the sphere of charitable activities. A decision was made to provide R250 million in bridging credit to Public TV until spring 2014, after which this will be replaced with [state] budget money,” Dmitriyev told journalists following a meeting of the VEB supervisory board.
OTR Director-General Anatoliy Lysenko announced at the end of July that the TV channel had almost run out of money. Some experts expressed the view that ORT faced a grim future as neither society nor the government was interested in supporting it financially.
The ORT press service later told RIA Novosti that the TV channel’s financial problems would be solved with help of credit.