Prime Minister Vladimir Putin inspected a scale model of the Nycomed production facility, which will produce finished pharmaceutical products, as well as one of the R-Pharm plant that will produce finished injection products.

Nycomed representatives told Prime Minister Putin that total investment in the project would reach 75 to 85 million euros and that construction would be finished by 2012.

R-Pharm representatives said that the production facility in Yaroslavl would make it possible to replace imported medical products with their domestically produced counterparts.

During the visit, Mr Putin said that in the next two years the government would spend about 460 billion roubles through its programme to modernise health care. He added that the funds would go "only to those regions that are ready for the change."