KIEV, Sept. 19 - The Ukrainian government plans to allocate 14.8 billion hryvnias ($3.05 billion) in state financing for development of the coal industry in 2009, according to draft 2009 budged recently submitted to Parliament.

This is a major increase from 7.74 billion hryvnias ($1.59 billion) to be allocated in 2008 as the government has been seeking to increase reliance on domestic coal extraction to reduce dependence on imported energy, such as natural gas imports, from Russia.