Moscow: Russia has increased spending on the 2018 World Cup preparations by 19.1 billion rubles ($324 million), according to information posted on the official information website on Monday.

Expenditure on the programme's implementation has been raised from 619.7 billion rubles ($10.5 billion) to 638.8 billion rubles (about $10.8 billion), according to the document, reports Tass.

A total of 350.5 billion rubles ($5.9 billion) will be allocated from the federal budget and 92.2 billion rubles (about $1.6 billion) from regional budgets while 196 billion rubles (around $3.3 billion) will be spent by organisations.

Russia is currently in full-swing preparations for the global football tournament.

The country selected 11 host cities to be the venues for the matches of the 2018 World Cup and they are Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sochi, Kazan, Saransk, Kaliningrad, Volgograd, Rostov-on-Don, Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg and Samara.

The matches of the 2018 World Cup will be held between June 14 and July 15 at 12 stadiums located in the 11 above-mentioned cities across Russia. Two of the stadiums are located in the Russian capital of Moscow.

--IANS