OREANDA-NEWS. February 20, 2012. The Prime Minister Mykola Azarov is concerned about the decline in print runs of books that published in Ukraine.

He announced this during a meeting with representatives of the national publishing industry and book distribution.

"I am concerned about the decline in circulation of our books. Formerly in Ukraine it was issued 130 million copies, now - 38 million. Almost 3.5 times there are reduced circulation figures of our publications. People started less buying books and less reading them in libraries. This trend is not good," the PM said.

The Prime Minister emphasized that during today's meeting wants to hear from publishers and book distributors proposals: what should be doing in order to remedy the situation.

Mykola Azarov stressed that in Ukraine it is necessary to develop an effective system of support for book publishing industry. "An innovative development of society is impossible without books," he said.

In particular, the Prime Minister offered to elaborate the draft of issue of a series of publications so-called "cheap libraries", accessible books, which will be published with large print runs and will have a small cost. As he said, it can be launching a series of publications of the school literature.

"We now put the question of providing school libraries and schools with textbooks. We have just closed the issues of ensuring senior pupils with textbook, and gradually we put before ourselves task for 2-3 years to fully resolve the issues of ensuring schools with all necessary books,"  the Prime Minister said.

He emphasized that during the current year it has significantly been increased funding for the program "Ukrainian book", in particular, for this purpose it is allocated 40 million UAH. "In this year, we have significantly increased funding for the program "Ukrainian book". I would like that all these books would have come in our public libraries and also school libraries, because at the schools our children should be involved in reading books," the PM said.